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MAXIMUM CAR LIMIT 
BILL 


Stenographic Report of Statements Made by Repre¬ 
sentatives of the Railway Companies in Virginia , 
and by Representatives of the Conductors' and 
Brakemen's Organizations , at Hearings 
Before Committees of the General 
Assembly of Virginia , at 
the 1914 Session , 
on the 


MAXIMUM CAR LIMIT BILL 


The Bill as Introduced Prohibited Railway Companies 
from Handling more than Fifty Cars in 
One Freight Train 



9 - 




MAXIMUM CAR LIMIT BILL 


At the 1914 meeting of the General Assembly of Virginia a 
number of bills to regulate railway companies were introduced 
as safety measures, so as to attract the support of members of 
the legislature and the interest of the public generally, but which 
were in reality only and solely for the purpose of forcing by law 
railway companies to employ more men, thus increasing by law 
the number of men eligible to belong, by reason of their employ¬ 
ment, to the various organizations of railway labor. The intent 
was to increase the membership of these organizations and by 
force of increased numbers to increase their political power. 

In presenting these bills no regard was had for the demands 
of the business, the interest of the public,—which must pay the 
freight—or the safety of employees. To increase the number 
of trains on the road and to increase the number of men on 
those trains could only result in increased opportunity for train 
accidents and increased injury of men exposed to the hazard 
of railroading. Too many men engaged in any hazardous occu¬ 
pation can be just as mischievous as too few, and the passage 
of these measures would only have resulted in increased train 
accidents and increased 'personal injury, and increased freight 
rates for the roads to be able to live. 

The following bill designed to limit the number of cars to 
be handled in any one freight train to fifty was introduced in 
the Senate by Mr. Montague and in the House by Mr. Birrell: 

A Bill to prohibit railway companies from operating 
freight trains in this State consisting of more than fifty 
cars, and to impose a penalty for failure to comply with 
the provisions of this act. 

Patron—Mr. Montague. 


fi. of D£ 
FEB 27 ISlii 



3 


Referred to Committee on Roads and Internal navi¬ 
gation. 

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly 
of Virginia, that it shall be unlawful for any railroad 
company, terminal company, corporation, firm, individ¬ 
ual, receiver or trustee, operating a railroad in the 
State of Virginia, to run or permit to be run over its 
tracks outside of yard limits, a freight train consisting of 
more than fifty (50) cars of either loads or empties. 

Section 2. Any, railroad company, terminal com¬ 
pany, corporation, firm, individual, receiver or trustee,, 
violating any of the provisions of this act shall be guilty 
of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be 
fined not less than five hundred ($500.00) dollars for 
each offense. 

Section 3. Prosecutions under this act shall be made 
by the Commonwealth’s Attorney in any court of com¬ 
petent jurisdiction in any county or municipal corpora¬ 
tion in or through which the train of such railroad may 
run. 

The bill was pressed before the Committee on Roads and 
Internal Navigation of the House and the Senate of Virginia 
by the Order of Railway Conductors, assisted by the members 
of the Order of Railway Trainmen. The Brotherhood of Rail¬ 
way Enginemen (B. of L. E.) did not endorse this measure, and 
some enginemen appeared before the committees in opposition 
thereto. This particular bill, and measures of this kind gener¬ 
ally, are of such far reaching effects and so thoroughly unneces¬ 
sary and would have resulted in such tremendously increased 
expenses, as well as accidents and injuries, that a stenographic 
report was taken of the hearings before the two committees men¬ 
tioned, and it follows in full. 

On February 9th, 1914, the House Committee held its first 
hearing on this bill, as follows: 

The following is a list of witnesses and advocates who ap¬ 
peared for and against the bill: 


4 


For the Bill: 

J. A. Dodson, Legislative Representative, Order of Railway- 
Conductors. 

W. 1ST. Doak, General Chairman, Brotherhood of Railway- 
Trainmen, Norfolk & Western Railway Company. 

Hon. C. J. Meetze, Member House of Delegates from Prince 
William County. 

Hon. J. Bred Birrell, Member House of Delegates from 
Alexandria County (Patron of Bill). 

C. C. Horn, General Chairman, Order Railway Conductors, 
Norfolk & Western Railway Company. 

Draper, Conductor, N. & W. Ry. 

Against the Bill: 

Mark W. Potter, President, C. C. & O. Ry. 

N. D. Maher, Vice President, N. & W. Ry. 

M. J. Caples, Vice President, C. & O. Ry. 

Geo. P. Johnson, General Manager, C. & O. Ry. 

J. Berlingett, Assistant General Manager, Virginian Rail¬ 
way. 

W. H. Wells, Engineer, Virginian Railway. 

L. H. Phetteplace, General Superintendent, C. C. & O. Ry. 
W. E. Hutchens, General Superintendent, Southern Rail¬ 
way. 

W. H. Newell, General Superintendent, Atlantic Coast Line 

Ry. 

W. S. Battle, Jr., General Claim Agent, N. & W. Ry. 

J. D. Llester, Superintendent, Shenandoah Division, N. & 

W. Ry. 

S. Nicholson, Trainmaster, Norfolk Division, N. & W. Ry. 
C. T. Heslip, Engineer, N. & W. Ry. 

C. M. Kidd, Air Brake Inspector, N. & W. Ry. 

C. D. Maxey, Engineer, N. & W. Ry. 

Hon. M. E. Love, 'Member House of Delegates, Lunenberg 
County. 

Mr. Kennedy, Business Man, Lunenberg County. 

W. B. Fitzhugh, Business Man, Eastern Shore of Virginia. 


5 


The following counsel appeared for the railway companies 
in opposition to the measure: 

H. G. Buchanan, Norfolk & Western Railway. 

W. B. Mcllwaine, Atlantic Coast Line and Southern Rail¬ 
ways. 

W. D. Cardwell, C. & O. and R. F. & P. Railways. 

L. L. Scherer, General Claim Agent, C. & 0. Ry. 

Walter H. Taylor, Virginian Railway. 

II. G. Morison, C. C. & O. Ry. 

R. P. Bruce, C. C. & O. Ry. 

CAR LIMIT BILL 

Hearing before Committee on Roads and Internal Navigation 
of the House of Delegates of Virginia, 

Feb. 9th, 1914. Feb. 11th, 1914. 

February 9th, 1914, 10 A. M. 

The Chairman : We are ready to proceed. 

Mr. Dodson : There are a number of witnesses here that 
will want to be heard in connection with this bill. I want to 
say in the beginning that we feel that we have an absolute right 
to present this bill to the Legislature of Virginia and to explain 
the conditions which justify the presentation of it. We want 
to produce evidence which shows that a bill of this kind is abso¬ 
lutely necessary in order to protect the lives and limbs of not 
only employees of these roads operating in the State of Virginia, 
but the traveling pub! ic as well; and we have got a number of 
specific cases here to cite that will show cases of personal injury 
and death and narrow escapes to the lives of the traveling public 
handled over these different roads. We have a gentleman here 
from the Norfolk & Western who is very much more familiar 
with these cases and the data submitted than I am, and I would 
like to introduce to you Mr. W. NT. Doak, representative of the 
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen of the Norfolk & Western. 

Mr. Doak: Mr. Chairman o>nd Gentlemen of the Com¬ 
mittee : As a matter of fact, I had not intended to present this; 


6 


but my colleague is absent at this time, delayed on account of 
a wreck; but I am fairly well familiar with the data that he 
had compiled, and I will read it for your information (Head¬ 
ing). 

Roanoke, Virginia, January 31st, 1914. 

To the Members of the General Assembly of the State of Vir¬ 
ginia, Richmond, Virginia. 

Gentlemen : We, the undersigned committee, respectfully 
submit for your consideration the following brief relative to a 
measure known as the Car Limit Bill now pending in both 
Houses. 

For some years the employees have been striving through 
their Committee to obtain a reduction in trains by limiting the 
same to the capacity of one engine in order to give them a rea¬ 
sonable degree of safety, but so far our efforts have been un¬ 
successful. 

It has become the well established and recognized fact by 
the public that the several States and National Government have 
the undisputed right to regulate railways in matters of general 
interests and general safety, therefore, being unable to regulate 
the number of cars in each train to the capacity of one engine 
through our Committee, we are, therefore, compelled to resort 
to legislation in order to give the employees as much protection 
to life and limb as can reasonably be given in this class of 
service. 

As to the necessity of such laws, a brief review of the re¬ 
ports of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the past 
twenty-four years, and the daily occurrence of accidents due, 
we believe, to the long train, will reveal the fact that there should 
be a maximum number of cars in each train run. 

The Commission’s report shows, “that in each one hundred 
and sixteen minutes, one employee is killed, and each seven 
minutes one employee injured.” In dealing further with this 
subject the following figures taken from the Commission’s re- 


7 


poit covering the last twenty-four years are very convincing and 
show the appalling number of casualties on American railways. 

“There were killed 188,037 persons, and injured 1,395,618 
persons, making a total of 1,583,655, or an average of 7,835 
killed, and 58,150 injured, or a total annually of 66,000 persons 
skilled and injured.” 

i F urther investigation shows that at least 4,000 traimnen 
are killed annually, 16,000 seriously injured, and 12,000 suffer 
minor injuries necessitating a loss of three or more days lay-off. 
In dealing further with this question we find that with all of the 
safety appliances and devices the number of deaths and injuries 
are increasing, which, we believe, is attributable to the increased 
number of cars handled in each train; and by further compari¬ 
son we find for the first quarter of 1911 there were 105 employ¬ 
ees killed in train accidents, and in the first quarter of 1912, 
209 killed, or an increase of 100 per cent. We also find 33 
passengers killed in 1912 for first quarter as compared with 
28 for the same period of 1911, or an increase of 5. The total 
number of all persons killed during the first quarter of 1912 as 
compared with the same period of 1911 were 1,428 against 
1,411. 

How, in regard to the accidents and personal injuries occur¬ 
ring almost daily throughout the country, we desire to quote a 
few taken from statements of accident reports of the men 
affected, and which covers a period of about three years. 

Ho. 1. Air hose burst on lead engine in a train 
consisting of four engines and eighty-four cars. The 
concussion was so great on the rear of train that the con¬ 
ductor and brakeman were knocked out of cupola to floor 
of caboose with such force that they were rendered un¬ 
conscious. They were unable to proceed with train and 
returned home by passenger train. Upon arrival at sta¬ 
tion they were unable to walk, were taken home in the 
ambulance. 

Ho. 2. A knuckle pin broke in coupler on fifth car 
from engine in a train consisting of two engines and 
seventy-five cars. Concussion so great from the sudden 


8 


stop that the conductor was knocked out of cupola of 
caboose, injuring his hack to such an extent that he was 
under the care of a physician for seventeen days. 

No. 3. A coupler broke on the thirty-second car 
from engine in a train consisting of two engines and 
seventy-six cars, derailing two cars. In derailing the two 
cars, the concussion was absorbed to such an extent that 
the remaining cars did little damage to rear of train. 
No one injured. 

No. 4. The slack in a train consisting of two engines 
and eighty-nine cars ran up smashing one car and break¬ 
ing drawbars in two other cars. The demolition of the 
car and breaking of drawbars absorbed the shock to such 
an extent that no injury to men in caboose occurred. 

No. 5. Train parted eighth car from engine in a 
train consisting of two engines and eighty-five cars. 
Concussion on rear of train that brakeman was knocked 
down in caboose, with result being badly bruised and 
three ribs broken. Confined to hospital some time. 

No. 6. A train, consisting of two engines and fifty 
cars, parted while train was in motion, injuring the con¬ 
ductor. This conductor was out of service five months 
due to the injury. 

No. 7. A train, consisting of two engines and 
ninety-eight cars, broke coupler out of second car from 
engines, and the concussion caused by the sudden stop 
derailed the fiftieth and fifty-first cars from engines, 
throwing these cars across and blocking eastbound track. 
A passenger train had just passed and was not out of 
sight when the accident occurred. 

No. 8. A train, consisting of two engines and one 
hundred cars, was entering a station w T hen a signal was 
thrown to danger. The brake was put in emergency 
which caused the forty-eighth and forty-ninth cars from 
engine to derail, blocking eastbound track and knocking 
track out of line about five feet. Two passenger trains 
were past due at this station at time of accident; had 


9 


they been on time, it is hard to say what would have hap¬ 
pened. 

No. 9. A train, consisting of two engines and one 
hundred cars, burst an air hose near the engine which 
caused an all steel car near the caboose to buckle, block¬ 
ing the eastbound track. The brakeman was knocked off 
the caboose platform and badly shaken up, but recovered 
in time to run ahead and flag an approaching train on 
opposite track, and then go back to rear of his train and 
flag a passenger train that was following closely. 

No. 10. A train, consisting of two engines and one 
hundred cars, broke knuckle pin in tenth car from en¬ 
gine. The brake going to emergency caused the eighty- 
first and eighty-seventh cars from engine to buckle, 
blocking eastbound track just as a heavy freight train, 
was approaching from another direction. This train 
being unable to stop ran into the cars derailed, stripping 
cabs from engines, killing one of the firemen, injuring 
the other, and one brakeman. 

The public, the Government, and the railways themselves, 
are expecting safer movement of trains, and it is proper that 
every safeguard should be thrown around train operation to 
avoid the possible dangers of unnecessary risks or chances, yet 
there have been large increases in tonnage which of necessity 
increase the danger and responsibilities of employees, therefore, 
it seems proper that there should be laws requiring a reasonable 
number of cars in all trains to properly handle them with safety. 
We believe that it is of as much importance as any other public 
question that should require the attention of our lawmakers 
and most especially so when taking into consideration the appall¬ 
ing loss of life and limb annually upon our railways in conduct¬ 
ing public transportation. This measure has for its prime object 
the preservation of human life and limb, and is not prompted 
by selfish motives as some have said, but to the contrary is pro¬ 
posed by the employees from practical knowledge and expe¬ 
rience, whose daily work teaches them the necessity of such 
action. 


10 


In practically every state of the Union, the railroads have 
adopted the “Safety First Movement.” They are expending 
large sums of money for the purpose of better educating the 
employees the strict necsssity of obeying the laws of self-pre¬ 
servation and the preservation of life and limb of their fellow 
employees and the public. USTot only the railroads have taken 
up this important question, but the schools are teaching “Safety 
First” to the little ones. We ask, what could be of more im¬ 
portance to these little ones than securing the passage of this 
measure? Would it not provide that degree of safety to the 
husbands and fathers to which the wives and little ones are 
justly entitled ? 

We quote from a pamphlet issued by the Safety Commission 
of the' Norfolk & Western Railway, which says, in part: 

“After many experiments, some in the right direc¬ 
tion, others failures, the Safety Movement was evolved. 

It is still largely experimental, but that it will ultimately 
be of the greatest benefit, both to employees and the rail¬ 
ways, has been demonstrated beyond a doubt. Employees 
are losing time, limbs, and lives; their wives are losing 
husbands; their children are losing fathers; while em¬ 
ployers are losing by that reduction in efficiency which 
results from constantly putting in service new, green men 
to take the places of experienced men injured and killed. 

“During the three months, ending June 30th, 1913, 
eleven hundred and thirty-four (1,134) employees of this 
line were killed or injured.” 

We also desire to quote the opinion of the Public 
Service Commission of New York, concerning accident 
at Coming, N. Y., July 4th, 1912: 

“To secure radical improvement in the absolute, pre¬ 
vention of railroad accidents it is the clear duty of 
organizations of employees, for the protection of them¬ 
selves as well as the public, to cooperate vigorously and 
efficiently with the management in the strict enforcement 
of all rules affecting safety.” 


11 


“Safety First,” as a watchword, if of any value, must be 
followed through thick and thin; success is not the only con¬ 
sideration; if success eludes pursuit, all proper efforts must 
nevertheless be continued. A reduction in the number of fatal 
or non-fatal accidents in a month or a year is an encouragement; 
but the duty of conserving lives and limbs remains, even if 
evidence of success is defeated. 

In connection with safety, we desire to call attention to ex¬ 
ample Ho. 1, as given on preceding page, in which the conductor 
and flagman were rendered unconscious, and call attention to 
the dangers connected with an accident of this nature, two men 
whose duties require them to protect approaching trains, both 
of them having been rendered unconscious, suppose, for instance, 
there had been a passenger train following this train, or even 
a freight train, and had run into this disabled train, the results 
would have been at least two deaths and possibly a score of them. 

Take example Ho. 2, in which this conductor was injured 
to the extent that he was under the doctor’s care for a period of 
seventeen days. Take example Ho. 5, in which this brakeman 
was injured to such an extent that he was confined in the hos¬ 
pital for some time, or, take example Ho. 6, where this conductor 
was severely injured, and was out of service for a period of 
five months; all of these cases occasioned injury, suffer¬ 
ing, and loss of time. From the standpoint of justice it seems 
that some steps should be taken to prevent, if possible, just 
such accidents. Take example Ho. 7, and suppose this accident 
had happened just a few minutes before it did, with the oppos¬ 
ing track blocked on the time of a fast passenger train, untold 
death and injury would have followed in the wake of such. 
Take example Ho. 8, two passenger trains only escaped running 
into this wreck by being late on the schedule. Take example 
Ho. 9. It is almost miraculous that an accident was averted and 
the flagman on this train ran ahead and stopped an approaching 
freight train, and to the rear and stopped a passenger train after 
being thrown from the caboose platform and injured. Take 
example Ho. 10 and the horror is complete, as in this case the 


12 


eighty-first and eighty-seventh cars were derailed while passing 
another train on the opposite track, and this approaching train 
ran into the wreck with the result that the fireman was dismem¬ 
bered, leaving his head at one place, his heart at another, and 
his body at another, the most horrible death imaginable. At 
the same time the other fireman was severely injured, as well as 
one of the brakemen. Suppose this had been a passenger train, 
the number of deaths and injuries possible in such a case is 
beyond conception. All of these clearly demonstrate the many 
dangers in handling these long trains, therefore, we believe that 
no greater step could be taken towards safety than by the pas¬ 
sage of this proposed law. IT IS SAFETY FIRST TO THE 
GREATEST EXTEXT. 


Statement showing number of cars damaged in trains 
consisting of 60 loads or 90 empties per train for a period 
of 30 days: 

Out of 26 trains handled by 1 conductor, 21 cars were 
damaged. 

Out of 28 trains handled by 1 conductor, 13 cars were 
damaged. 

Out of 26 trains handled by 1 conductor, 12 cars were 
damaged. 

Out of 30 trains handled by 1 conductor, 18 cars w T ere 
damaged. 

Out of 25 trains handled by 1 conductor, 18 cars were 
damaged, making a total of 135 trains handled by five 
conductors for the thirty-day period, with the total of 
77 cars damaged, or on an average of 15 2-5 cars for each 
conductor. 

Taking the above figures as a basis, viz.: 135 trains 
handled, one-half of these being loaded trains of 60 cars 
and one-half of them being empty trains of 90 cars, making 
an average of 75 cars per train. By the proposed bill of 
50 cars this would increase the number of trains one-third, 
or on the above basis from 135 to 180. The cost per 100 
miles for one conductor and two brakemen at the rates 


13 


prevailing in this territory for this class or service, of $4.10 
and $2.75, respectively, each, would make a total of $9.60; 
this multiplied by the one-third increase of 45 crews would 
make a cost of $432.00. Taking the above figures of 77 
cars damaged at an average cost of $20.00 per car for re¬ 
pairs, would make a total of $1,540.00, and by comparison 
of what it would cost by adding the additional crews as 
above figured, at $432.00, we find a difference of $1,108.00, 
if all these accidents were prevented, or we find by compari¬ 
son that it would not cost the railways one-third as much 
as repairs to cars on above basis. 

Take on a system where there are an average of 200 
crews, taking the above as the basis for the same period, 
the total number of cars damaged at $20.00 per car would 
amount to 3,000 cars, or a total of $60,000.00, or taking 
the same number of crews given above as a basis, or 5 
crews for thirty days, and multiplying it by 40 or 200 crews, 
would make an increase 66 3-6, plus 200, making a total of 
266 2-3 crews in the aggregate daily at an increased cost 
of $640.00 per day, or $19,200 for thirty days. De¬ 
ducting this sum from $60,000.00 we find a difference of 
$40,800.00 in favor of the railway for the thirty day period. 

Assuming that all of the above-mentioned accidents 
were not caused by excess tonnage, or taking even one-third 
of them only as a basis, it would mean in the aggregate 
that $20,000.00 loss to the railway was due to the trains 
having too many cars in them. 

By the enactment of this law it would cost $19,200.00, 
or a difference of $800.00 in favor of the railway company, 
when as a matter of fact one-half or more of the accidents 
above given were directly traceable to excessive tonnage, 
causing draft gear to give way, couplers to break, weaker 
cars to give way or in other ways confirming the statement 
that the trains handled were too heavy. 

Further referring to cost, we will take the Norfolk & 
Western Railway as a basis and compare rates of pay with 


14 


increases in gross and net earnings for a period of six years, 
1907-1913, and by so doing we find the following: 

The rates of pay for through freight service conductors, 
S3.60 per 100 miles in 1907 as against $4.10 in 1913, which 
is the same rate now in effect in this service, or an increase 
of fifty cents per hundred miles, percentage increase ap¬ 
proximately fourteen per cent. 

For the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1907, the gross 
earnings of this company were in excess of $28,000,000.00 
and the net earnings in excess of $10,000,000.00, and for 
the fiscal year closing June 30th, 1913, the gross earnings 
were in excess of $43,000,000.00 and net earnings in excess 
of $15,000,000.00, or an increase^of $15,000,000.00 gross 
and $5,000,000.00 net, or a percentage increase approxi¬ 
mately 53 per cent, gross and 50 per cent. net. By these 
comparisons we have very convincing evidence of the fallacy 
of a possible argument that will be advanced that the 
rates of pay of conductors, granted by the railway, have 
been greater than the returns to the railway company. 
Also, no doubt, the argument will be advanced that ton¬ 
nage has been increased but wages in a greater propor¬ 
tion, which the above figures will not confirm. It is, there¬ 
fore, contended that the railway has been the recipient of 
greater returns by at least 25 to 50 per cent, than have 
been the conductors, and by the enactment of the pro¬ 
posed law the railways will not be hampered to the alarm¬ 
ing extent as possibly some would have you believe. 

The position of the employees we represent is that the 
size of cars has been greatly increased, the number of cars 
per train handled has been increased, the duties and re¬ 
sponsibilities of employees increased, until at the present 
time the increases in wages that have been granted during 
the period of this change is wholly inadequate and out of 
proportion to the earnings of the railways who have been 
benefited by the change. 

In considering the cost incident to complying to the 
proposed law, it is well to call attention to the fact that 


15 


there is no way by which we can estimate the cost of human 
life and limb, nor is there any adequate method by which 
the suffering of a man mangled in railway accidents can be 
measured, therefore, if the enactment of this law would 
prevent the loss of one life or the suffering of one human 
being, it is worthy of the consideration of the lawmakers 
of our State, and the cost should not be considered as a 
material factor in arriving at a proper conclusion in this 
matter. 

In conclusion, on behalf of the employees we represent,, 
their wives and children, as a humanitarian measure we; 
ask you to give careful attention and consideration to this 
matter with the hopes that in your wisdom you may see 
fit to give us the relief asked for by this law. 

Mr. Dodson: This document was drafted by a com¬ 
mittee of ten men, handling these trains to-day. We would 
be glad to leave a copy of this document with you for your 
inspection in executive session. 

I would like for you to hear Mr. Meetze in behalf of 
this measure. 

Mr. Meetze: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the 
Committee: I believe that I have the distinction of having 
more friends on the railroads of the State than any member 
of the House of Delegates, and I think it a pretty good 
compliment. I try to be friendly with these fellows: They 
say that Prince William was asking for a “tater” and they 
sent an “agitater.” 

Now, gentlemen of this committee, seriously, the people 
of Virginia have not sent us here as agitators of the railroad 
companies; they have not sent us here to legislate against 
the railroad companies and corporations, but they have 
sent us here to legislate for the safety and protection of the 
citizens of Virginia and throughout the United States; and 
it is through agitation and legislation that the railroad 
companies and the people have been compelled to get to¬ 
gether and enact such laws which have been not only for 
the benefit of the railroad companies but for the people at 



10 


large. From the statement which you have just heard 
read to you gentlemen, the figures show that they will not 
only be for the safety and protection of the trainmen but 
the public, and it will be dollars and cents saved to the 
railroad companies. There is no legislation which you 
will enact, or which this body will enact but what will cost 
some extra expense and adjustment of circumstances by the 
railroad companies of the State of Virginia. 

I represent a county which has two double-track rail¬ 
roads and one single-track railroad running through it. I 
want to say to you, gentlemen, frankly that no member of 
the House of Delegates has more friends than I have among 
railroad people. I have never nor will I ever introduce any 
legislation to antagonize the railroad companies. Any 
legislation which I introduce or which I favor will be, in my 
judgment, not only for the benefit of the public but for the 
railroads themselves. As I have stated before this com¬ 
mittee before, having had about nine years’ experience on 
railroads, I know what it means to ride on one of these 
long trains. 

A Committeeman: Were you ever an operator on a rail¬ 
road? 

Mr. Meetze: I lived in shanty cars about nine years, 
working for the Western Union Telegraph Company. I 
have had my cars in the rear of a train and I have had my 
length measured upon the floor of that car many a time, and 
my beans and fat meat and everything scattered all over it, 
my stove turned upside down and men’s heads driven up 
against the car in the bunk at night. I know what railroad 
life is. I know what is the slack in a long train, and I didn’t 
ride in any eighty-car train or hundred-car train; but the 
slack in those trains of thirty and forty and fifty cars is 
immense. When something happens at the front, some¬ 
thing has got to happen at the back as sure as you are born, 
and it happens quick. It might seem to this committee, it 
might seem to some of you present, with railroads having 
built tracks and having gotten engines to handle from a 


17 


hundred to a hundred and twenty-five cars, that it would 
be a hardship on them to reduce them to a fifty-car limit; 
but, when you count up the expense that is saved by hand¬ 
ling the lighter train and the shorter train, you will find, 
and the railroad companies will find, that at the end of 
the year they will have more money, in fact, by running 
shorter trains and more of them than they will with these 
trains of great length. 

Now, there is a great deal said about these trains buck¬ 
ling and jumping onto other tracks on which passenger 
trains go. That is true, but in double track business they 
don’t always use two tracks. Sometimes they have a 
wreck or washout and a single track is used both north 
and south or east and west, whichever way the road may 
run. It is not always when an accident happens that a 
train is coming on another track, because sometimes for 
eight or ten miles or five or six miles in a block they will 
use one track for both trains. It is not always that the 
train blocks the other track when an accident occurs, be¬ 
cause they are just as liable to come behind you or in front 
of you on the other track. When one of these trains go 
along and something happens to these cars and a passenger 
train is coming, you can’t estimate, the damage and loss 
of life that would happen right then and there; there is no 
estimate that could be put on it. 

I am sure, gentlemen, that you will seriously consider this 
not only from the side of the trainmen, but from the side 
of the railroad people, giving each man what is fair and 
honest and just. I know that you will be able, after looking 
into this thing, to see that not only the public demands it 
but the public requires it at our hands to legislate and give 
such legislation as will be for the safety and protection of 
the public; and, when you see that it does not or will not 
interfere with the railroad companies in dollars and cents, 
I believe that you will seriously consider this bill and report 
it favorably and let it go before the House and let the peo¬ 
ple say that we have protection for life and property. 


18 


The Chairman: Mr. Birrell, is there any one else that 
wants to be heard? 

Mr. Birrell: Mr. Dodson. 

Mr. Dodson: I want to read you a rule of one of these 
railroad companies in order to show to you, gentlemen, that 
they anticipate that just such conditions, in reference to ac¬ 
cidents from the handling of these long trains, will happen 
as was outlined in this accident No. 9 in this paper you heard 
read. This is Rule No. 33: “In addition to the require¬ 
ments of Rule 101, Book of Rules, in case a train is stopped 
by an emergency application of the air brakes, a flagman 
must be sent out immediately to stop trains on the pas¬ 
senger track until it is ascertained that the opposite track is 
not obstructed.” 

Now, that shows conclusively that, when they start 
these trains out on the road, they start them expecting that 
these breaks will occur and the heavy concussion will wreck 
the rear end of the train to such an extent that it will throw 
them on the opposite track and trains on that track may 
come in contact with them; just as when this fireman lost 
his life. It was an act of Providence that that was not a 
passenger train with hundreds of lives. I was before you, 
gentlemen, here between ten and eleven o’clock on the same 
day this accident occurred and told you these things would 
happen and that sooner or later some train was going into 
it, and it happened in less than twelve hours after I was 
before you, gentlemen, at that time. 

Mr. W. B. Mcllwaine: What company’s rules are those 
you have been reading? 

Mr. Dodson: The Norfolk & Western. I would like 
it understood that we are not here trying to bankrupt the 
railroad companies. What is to the railroad companies’ 
is to our interest; but we cannot afford to have these rail¬ 
road companies experimenting with the lives of our men, 
members of our organization, and the traveling public like¬ 
wise. Now, we know something about the revenue of these 
hundred-car trains and likewise the fifty-car trains, and 


19 


we have reason to believe that, with a fifty-car train, there 
would be no chance for these railroad companies to go into 
the hands of receivers. We have heard these statements 
made and you have read them in the paper. You have read 
resolutions passed by the various Boards of Trade of the 
various cities in Virginia, men who never had a day’s prac¬ 
tical experience in railroad service in their lives—very 
competent to pass on these practical questions. As I stated 
before, take this accident No. 9. There is one man who lost 
his life, a man who had only been in the railroad service, I 
understand, five or six months, with a wife and five chil¬ 
dren. Think of what that means to that woman and those 
children, the loss of that man’s life; and that alone would 
justify the enactment of some law to protect the lives of 
employees and the public. Now, a large amount of this 
argument that has been made here, has been made on the 
Norfolk & Western. I want to say to you frankly that all 
the trouble is not on the Norfolk & Western by a whole lot. 
Take the C. & 0. Railway here; we have information that 
train after train passes over the C. & 0. Railway that cost 
that company for the conductor twice the amount of money 
that they contracted to pay him for that service. Why? 
Because the train is so heavy and so many cars that they 
can’t handle it; the draft rigging and the draft gear will 
not stand the strain; the drawheads pull out. I think I am 
safe in saying that those drawheads weight about 750 pounds. 
I don’t think there is a man on this committee or one in this 
room that can handle 750 pounds. In many cases who is 
left to handle this drawhead? Nobody but the conductor, 
unless he does like a C. & 0. man did between Richmond 
and Newport News a few days ago, walk up and get the 
engineer and fireman to help him. Take the Virginian 
Railroad: They are having their trouble. It has not been 
a great while ago that they appointed as assistant to the 
Superintendent a man I know very well; he didn’t have 
experience with these long trains, didn’t know what these 
men were up against, didn’t know about this heavy con- 


20 


cussion when the air hose burst, and drawheads pulling 
out. He is going over the road on his duties and what 
happens? The air hose bursts, and he showed up in Rich¬ 
mond and the side of his face looked like a bull dog had 
chewed him. I honestly felt sorry for him, that he hadn’t 
had experience and didn’t know how to protect himself. 
These are the things these men are up against, and that is 
why this bill has been introduced, and it is why we are in¬ 
terested very strongly that it be enacted into law, 

I will say that we are willing to rest our side of the case 
and give the other side an opportunity to be heard. Of 
course, we reserve the right to be heard afterwards. 

Mr. Birrell: As patron of this bill, they did not send 
me here as a “tater.” I think possibly they sent me here as 
a lemon. I come here as a mediator and legislator for things 
that concern the men and the railroads. I believe we owe as 
much duty to protect corporate interests as anybody’s in¬ 
terest, as any individual interest; at the same time I want 
you to consider over the matter that has been presented by 
these gentlemen representing the trainmen. You want to 
consider their interest. I don’t care what the monetary 
interest of any railroad is; it can’t weigh in the consider¬ 
ation of human life and human safety. The only thing we 
want is a fair deal, which we know this committee is going to 
give us. If the railroad companies are operating the roads 
without danger to employees and to the general public, then 
refuse to report this bill favorably. If you find, after 
mature consideration, that these men are presenting a case 
that shows that the lives of the employees and the lives of the 
general public are in danger, no matter what the cost to the 
railroad company is, no matter what preparation they have 
made for the operation of these lengthy trains, I say it is your 
duty to curtail the length of these trains, because no outlay 
of money can be a consideration for the operation of trains 
that endanger the lives of employees and the lives of the 
general public. So far as I am personally concerned, I 
know nothing about the operation of these long trains. In 


21 


my section of the country these trains are not operated. 
I am not a practical railroad man. These men who have 
presented this subject to you are men who have been engaged 
in the operation of trains of all characters and are competent 
to tell you exactly what the result of the operation of these 
trains is. I think that they have presented a case ’that 
is worthy of your consideration. I simply want you to 
consider both from the standpoint of the employees and from 
the standpoint of the railroads and weigh every matter 
that may be presented to you, and let justice be done though 
the heavens fall. 

Mr. Dodson: In answer to Mr. Robertson’s question 
as to the consolidation of the two bills, I will say this on 
behalf of the conductors, that the two bills are before you 
separately, introduced by the two train organizations, 
trying to meet conditions. You heard the other day from 
the trainmen’s organization and you heard to-day from our 
organization. We are ready at any time to meet you or 
meet a sub-committee of this committee to take up that 
question. 

Mr. Willis: I think the committee should pass on 
them separately. 

Mr. N. D. Maher, Vice President of the N. & W. Rail¬ 
way, is here, and would like to be heard if these gentlemen 
are finished. 

The Chairman: We will hear Mr. Maher. 


REMARKS OF MR. N. D. MAHER. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: 

I have had the privilege of living in Virginia about 
thirty years, being connected with the Norfolk & Western 
Railway Company for that time. 

The Chairman: What do you do on that road? 

Mr. Maher: I am Vice President now in charge of 
operation, but I have been in various positions in the oper- 


22 


ating department of the Norfolk & Western for the last 
thirty years. 

Now, before beginning my formal statement, in answer 
to these gentlemen on the other side, I want to say that the 
Norfolk & Western has full confidence in the loyalty and 
integrity of their employees. We believe that anything 
they say here against the interest of our company is said 
through probably their being misled by people who are 
misinformed on the subject. 

I have with me a statement, which I propose to make to 
the committee and will file with the committee if they de¬ 
sire, covering this whole subject from the railroad’s stand¬ 
point. So far as safety is concerned, we are going to show 
you that, by the reduction of trains on the road, we very 
much reduce the chances of accident and we very much 
increase the safety. 

Mr. Brown: You mean fewer trains? 

Mr. Maher: Yes, sir. We also will show in this state¬ 
ment actual facts and figures made up from our records; 
and there are other lines here who have similar statements, 
I presume, and will present their situation also. 

Statement of N. D. Maher, Vice President Norfolk and 
Western Railway Company Before the Roads Committee of 
the House of Delegates, 1914 Session, of the Virginia Legis¬ 
lature. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

A number of bills have been introduced before the 
Virginia Legislature which if enacted as presented would 
cost the Norfolk & Western Railway alone, over $2,700,000 
per annum. They are such bills as the Maximum Train 
Bill, the Full* Crew Bill, the Caboose Bill, the Headlight 
Bill, the Section Bill, the Railway Franchise Bill, and 
others. The first of these measures which I mention, the 
Maximum Train Bill, limiting the number of freight cars 
to be handled in any one train to fifty, would cost the 
Norfolk & Western Railway over $1,600,000 per annum 


23 


on the basis of the present business, and would mean the 
financial ruin of the company. The rapid growth of busi¬ 
ness which has marked the development of the State during 
the past ten years has made it necessary for the manage¬ 
ment of this company to take measures to meet the in¬ 
creased expenses which have prevailed year by year on 
account of the payment of higher wages, greater taxes and 
the construction of non-revenue producing structures, rep¬ 
resented largely, so far as this company is concerned, by 
overhead and undergrade highway crossings. The policy 
of this company has heretofore been to economize in the 
conduct of its transportation business. Conducting the 
transportation of a railroad safely, conveniently, and eco¬ 
nomically is what may be termed the science of railroading, 
and is the item of expense to which managing officers give 
their greatest time and attention. The maintenance of 
way and structures and of equipment can be regulated to 
a fixed sum per month, and this expenditure means the 
maintenance of the ways and structures and of equipment 
to a high degree of efficiency or permitting it to deteriorate. 
The Norfolk & Western Railway Company has kept its 
road and equipment to the highest degree of efficiency. 
The conducting of transportation, however, presents a 
different problem, and the effort must be to reduce the 
unit of cost of handling business which is offered to the 
company. It has been the experience of years of manag¬ 
ing officers of railroads that the only way to secure low 
cost of transportation is by increasing the number of tons 
of freight carried by each train. The management of the 
Norfolk & Western Railway Company commenced years 
ago to increase the tractive power of its locomotives, the 
carrying capacity of its cars, and to eliminate adverse 
grades and curves wherever it was physically possible for 
it to do so. Large terminal yards have also been con¬ 
structed and millions of dollars have been spent each 
year with the one definite end in view; namely, that of 
reducing the cost of transportation. The result of the 


24 


experience and effort and expenditures has been that in¬ 
stead of hauling 25 or 30 cars per train or even as high as 
50 or 60 cars, the number of cars handled in trains in various 
portions of the State of Virginia has been brought up to 
from 60 to 100 cars. It must, therefore, be evident to the 
mind of any man who has duly considered this question 
that to go back to the conditions that prevailed ten years 
ago would mean that the money expended for better grades 
and heavier equipment has been thrown away, and that 
there cannot be again money spent for such purposes. 
There will be no need of sums to be expended for further 
development or improvement, and the stopping of develop¬ 
ment and improvement extends to all classes and lines of 
business. There can only be one result, and that is the 
financial ruin of this property, and the ruin of the property 
means great damage to the State of Virginia. 

During the past ten years gross earnings have increased, 
but net earnings have not increased proportionately, on 
account of tremendously increasing expenses. 

The following table is a statement of the wages paid 
trainmen in 1897 and in 1913, and it must also be considered 
that whereas in 1897 the pay was based on a day of ten 
hours it is now based on a day of nine hours: 


COMPARISON OF WAGES, 1897 AND 1913. 
Conductors’ Pay per 100 Miles. 





Increase 

Avg. Pay 


1897 

1913 

Per Cent. 

Per Month 

Passenger. 

.. $1 75 

$2 90 

65.7 

$185 00 

Through Freight. . . 

. . 2 80 

4 10 

46.4 

| 141 50 

Local Freight. 

. . 3 00 

4 50 

50.0 

* 

Brakemen’s Pay per 100 Miles. 





Increase 

Avg. Pay 


1897 

1913 

Per Cent. 

Per Month 

Passenger. 

$ 90 

$1 60 

77.8 

$113 30 

Local Freight. 

. . 2 00 

3 00 

50.0 

| 103 55 

Through Freight... . 

. . 1 75 

2 75 

57.1 








25 


Engineers ’ Pay per 100 Miles . 


Increase Avg. Pay 
1897 1913 Per Cent. Per Month 

Passenger. $3 00 $4 40 46.7 $230 16 

Through Freight. 4 00 5 25 31.3 1 

Mallet Eng. 6 50 62.5 180 00 

Local Freight. 4 00 5 50 37.5 J 


Firemen’s Pay per 100 Miles. 

Increase Avg. Pay 
1897 1913 Per Cent. Per Month 


Passenger. $1 50 $2 50 66.7 $128 65 

Through Freight. 1 75 f 3 10 77.1 ) 

' Mallet Eng. \ 4 00 128.6 [ 118 54 

Local Freight. 1 75 3 25 85.7 J 


You will observe that this statement shows the average 
pay per month that employees in train service can make 
by working full time. 

The result of the increased wages and expenses of train 
service has been that the cost per train mile of handling 
freight has more than doubled during this period: 


In 1897 the cost per freight train mile. $1 02 

In 1913 the cost per freight train mile. 2 10 


During this period the revenue received from hauling 
passengers and freight have decreased as follows: 

Decrease 

1897 1913 Per Cent. 

Revenue per passenger per 

mile—cents. 3.179 2.617 17.678 

Revenue per ton freight per 

mile—cents. . 445 .429 3.59 


From these comparative figures it is apparent that in 
the face of increased wages and costs of operation, the only 
way to increase revenue, not proportionately, but at all 














26 


is to haul more cars and tons per train. This has been done 
as shown by the following: 

Increase 

1897 1913 Per Cent. 


Average cars per Frt. 

train. 

Average tons of freight 

per train. 

Expenses per freight 

train mile. 

Earnings per freight 

train mile. 

Taxes paid in Virginia $ ! 
Fixed charges.2,5 


29 

80 

40 

17 

34.80 

325 

31 

763 

84 

134.80 

$ 1 

02 

$ 2 

10 

105.88 

1 

44 

3 

27 

127.08 

5,405 

98 $ 830,669 

55 

257.42 

',105 

66 4,245,567 

56 

79.36 


When link and pin couplings were in use more than 50 
cars were frequently and whenever possible hauled in each 
train. 

The number of men employed by the Norfolk & Western 
in train service in Virginia is, by classes: 


Passenger Engineers. 62 

Freight Engineers. 547 

Passenger Firemen. 62 

Freight Firemen. 580 

Passenger Conductors. 51 

Freight Conductors. 265 

Passenger Brakemen. 62 

Freight Brakemen—white. 560 

Freight Brakemen—colored. 139 


A total of. 2,328 

Generally trains of more than 50 cars are run between 
Bluefield, W. Va., and Norfolk, Va. 

There are employed between these points, in train 
service, 996 men. 

There are employed in Virginia in other branches of 
railroad service, by classes: 


Shop men. 5,574 

Station service. 1,502 

Track service. 5,459 


12,535 






















27 


The passage of this act would increase the number of 
trainmen employed in Virginia, 716; and this would apply 
chiefly on portions of the road where we now have 996. 

Using the month of October, 1913, as a basis, and this 
is not one of our heaviest months, in order to comply with 
the terms of this bill and handle the business offered in 
Virginia in trains of 50 cars each, would have required 
588 additional freight trains, representing 57,300 additional 
train miles, and costing $125,473.11 more than it did cost 
to handle the October business. 

On this basis and calculating the additional cost by 
freight districts mean a cost per annum of $1,621,677.32, 
in addition to the amount actually required to move the 
business, and without one single benefit to the public or 
to the employees, except to increase the number of train¬ 
men on a portion of the road, and with the disadvantage 
of more trains, increasing the opportunity for accident 
thereto, and more men to be exposed to death and injury. 

It cannot be disputed that the more trains on a road, 
the more opportunity of accident to not only those trains 
and the employees on them, but to people at highway cross¬ 
ings and in the streets of cities and towns and on tracks 
generally, to say nothing of increased opportunity to kill 
and injure stock and set out fires. As a matter of fact 
trains of more than 50 cars on account of being heavier, 
are handled more slowly and cause the deaths of a very 
much smaller number of employees and others than lighter 
trains. 

I have had prepared an analysis of the deaths and in¬ 
juries caused by trains on the Norfolk & Western road of 
more than 50 cars and 50 cars or less in the State of Virginia 
during the two years ending June 30, 1913. Our statistics 
show that the total trains run in one year, based on actual 
trains run July 1st, to September 30th, 1913, were as follows: 


28 


The trains of more than 50 cars 

were. 16712 35 per cent. 

The trains of 50 cars or less 

were. 31112 65 per cent. 

47824 100 per cent. 

Trains of more than 50 cars, killed 1 employee, injured 179 
employees. 

Trains of 50 cars or less, killed 20 employees, injured 521 
employees. 

The total mileage of trains of more than 50 cars 


was.4,173,027 miles 

The total mileage of trains of 50 cars or less 

was.7,770,382 miles 

The total passenger train mileage was.5,137,293 miles 


Of the 20 deaths and 521 injuries by trains of 50 cars or 
less, 5 deaths and 114 injuries were by passenger trains. 
These casualties are from all causes, wdiether struck by trains, 
falling from trains or in train accidents. The one employee 
killed by a train of more than 50 cars was struck and run 
over. Of the twenty employees killed by trains of less than 
50 cars, three were killed by being struck by obstructions 
and three were killed by falling from cars or engines. 

The following figures give number of people other than 
employes killed and injured by trains of more and less than 
50 cars: 

Trains of more than 50 cars, killed 8 and injured 16. 

Trains of 50 cars or less, killed 76 and injured 193. 

Passenger trains killed 24 and injured 42, and these are 
included in the killed and injured by trains of less than 50 
cars. 

Of the eight people killed by trains of more than 50 cars 
none was killed in a train accident. All the deaths were due 
to falling from and being struck by trains. 

Of the 76 killed by trains of less than 50 cars four were 
trespassers killed in train accidents, 22 were killed in falling 









29 


from trains (getting on and off) and 50 were killed by being 
struck by trains. 

From these figures it is perfectly obvious that decreasing 
the number of trains run by increasing the train load, is not 
only in the interest of economy, but that it is the greatest 
possible safeguard to the employees themselves, and to the 
public generally. The more trains run and the more em¬ 
ployees put on the trains, of necessity the more accidents, 
deaths, and injuries. 

With regard to the breaking in two of trains—it is a fact 
that they do break in two, and it is also true that this source 
of trouble is not confined to trains of 50 cars or more. The 
breaking in two of a train or the bursting of an air hose 
causes the automatic emergency application of the air brake. 
The sudden stopping of the train by the emergency applica¬ 
tion of the air brake will sometimes break up cars, and cause 
death and injury. Disastrous wrecks have been attributed 
to this cause, and these wrecks have happened to trains of 
50 cars or less as well as to longer trains. It is also true that 
we get the strongest equipment and the best air hose and 
couplers that money will buy. As long as there are rail¬ 
roads, there will be accidents. Our best efforts are directed 
towards reducing the units (trains) that cause accidents, 
and the number of men exposed to the hazards of the busi¬ 
ness, with due regard to the efficiency of the service and the 
welfare of the employees. 

From the 1st to the 15th of January, 1913, I have kept a 
statement showing delays to trains in Virginia on account of 
breaking in two. The delays caused by trains breaking in 
two amounted to 254 hours and 57 minutes, an average of 
72 minutes per train affected, but the average to the whole 
number of trains run amounted to less than 4^ minutes 
per train. To save 4minutes per freight train run does 
not justify the expenditure of over $1,600,000 and the 
increased risk of accident and injury. 

With reference to trainmen being kept on duty more than 
sixteen hours and relieved on the road on account of the 


30 


Sixteen Hour Federal Law. The law prohibits, except in 
emergencies, the keeping of trainmen on duty more than 
sixteen hours. When from any cause trains are caught by 
this law, we either send a fresh crew to bring the train into 
the terminal, or if this is not possible, tie the train up at a 
siding, having regard for the comfort of the employees. 
During the year 1913, on all divisions and freight districts in 
Virginia, there were 58,885 road movements, and of this 
number only 873 were affected from any cause whatever by 
the operation of the sixteen-hour law, the percentage of 
trains delayed beyond sixteen hours being one and five-tenths 
per cent. I venture to assert that this average will compare 
favorably with any manufacturing or other business. 

I make no misstatement when I say that it would be 
physically impossible to transport the business which is 
offered us through the State of Virginia from Bluefield to 
Norfolk with trains limited to 50 cars to each train. 

The only reason for the introduction of these bills is to 
compel by law all railways of the State to employ more men 
in train service without any possible advantage to the public, 
which must eventually pay the freight, and in order for the 
road to be able to live, without providing one cent for better¬ 
ments and improvements, the freight rates within the State 
would have to be materially advanced. 

You could pass no measures which would do more to 
cause the deaths and injury of trainmen and others than to 
pass this Car Limit Bill, increasing the number of trains, 
and the so-called Full Crew Bill, increasing the number 
of brakemen on trains. 

There was introduced in the House of Representatives in 
Washington, on December 13th, 1913, the Stevens Bill, by 
the terms of which the Interstate Commerce Commission 
is authorized upon the complaint, or on its own motion, with¬ 
out complaint, to investigate the roadway, track, structures, 
equipment and facilities used by common carriers in inter¬ 
state or foreign commerce; the operating rules, regulations, 
methods, train schedules, size of train crews, hours of railway 


31 


employees, or any other matter affecting the safe operation 
of trains engaged in interstate or foreign commerce. It 
would seem that if this bill should become law it would turn 
over to the Interstate Commerce Commission practically 
all of these questions which the General Assembly of Virginia 
is now considering, and when Congress has acted in these 
matters, the work of the General Assembly would be nulli¬ 
fied. 

I am speaking to you more in my capacity as a citizen 
of the State than as the Vice President of the largest tax 
payer in your State. The passage of these unnecessary 
measures can only mean the ruin of your railroad properties, 
and the largest industry in your State cannot be seriously 
crippled without working detriment to the business interests 
of the State. I cannot too strongly urge upon you the great 
importance of rejecting these bills which are offered to you 
disguised as safety measures, but which have no reason or 
justification back of them. The sole reason is to compel 
the railroads by law to employ more men, and this without 
regard to the dangers of such employment. 

N. D. MAHER, 

Vice President Norfolk & Western Railway Company. 

Mr. Robertson: Don’t you believe there is a point 
where you would have to stop increasing the length of your 
train? 

Mr. Maher: No, we may have to increase them more. 

Mr. Robertson: Is it possible to make them any con¬ 
ceivable length you choose to name? 

Mr. Maher: It may be. 

Mr. Robertson: Don’t you know it is not possible to 
make them any conceivable length, maybe, three miles? 

Mr. Maher: I don’t know. It may be possible. We 
may do it. 

Mr. Brown: While it is not pertinent to the question, 
about what dividend is your road paying to stockholders 
now? 


32 


Mr. Maher: Six per cent, on the common stock. 

Mr. Brown: Is that the best it can do? 

Mr. Maher: Yes, sir, I think that is the best it can do 
and provide money enough for improvements to make our 
road safe and give better service to the public. 

The Chairman: Has the gentleman from Roanoke any¬ 
body he wants to be heard? 

Mr. Willis: Mr. Maher just wanted to be heard. I 
don’t know of anybody else. 

Mr. Robertson: I would like to ask the gentleman 
speaking a question. When he figured on that matter of 
the difference in accidents on long trains and short trains, 
he did not use any specified number, for instance, per 
thousand cars or per hundred cars. You did not say any¬ 
thing about the length of haul or the percentage per hun¬ 
dred cars or anything of that sort. 

Mr. Maher: They are both on the same basis. Take 
the total number of trains for the same period. 

Mr. Robertson: You gave the total but you did not 
say what the percentage on each individual train is. 

Mr. Maher: On a train mile basis? 

Mr. Robertson: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Maher: It is relative. 

Mr. Robertson: Which would be the greatest, do you 
think? 

Mr. Maher: Less than fifty cars. 

Mr. Buchanan: Suppose he read that over. I think 
the information is there that you want. 

Mr. Robertson: He read his total accidents but did 
not say what percentage it was per train, that is, per each 
individual train of the same number of crew. 

Mr. Maher: Trains of more than fifty cars were thirty- 
five per cent, and trains of fifty cars or less were sixty-five 
per cent. 

Mr. Robertson: Of the whole business? 

Mr. Maher: Yes. 

Mr. Robertson: That doesn’t get at the point I want. 


3 


For each train with the same number of crew on it, if you 
had fifty cars, would your figures show the loss was greater 
on a small train than on a larger? Your figures don’t quite 
get at that particular thing. 

Mr. Maher: I gave you the train mileage and the 
number killed, and gave you the percentage of all kinds of 
trains. 

Mr. Robertson: You didn’t quite get at that particular 
thing though. 

The Chairman: The next gentleman. 

Mr. Cardwell: I present Mr. M. J. Caples, of the C. & 0. 

STATEMENT OF MR. M. J. CAPLES. 

Gentlemen: 

Before presenting the formal statement that I have 
prepared, I would like to make a brief statement of what 
the railroads of this State, and particularly the Chesapeake 
& Ohio, have endeavored to do for the purpose of securing 
greater economy in the transportation of freight, that the 
enactment of this bill would nullify and prevent in the 
future. 

Speaking from an experience of thirty years in actual 
railroad service, both in building railroads for the especial 
purpose of securing cheap and safe operation and in super¬ 
vising their operation, I consider this bill extremely harm¬ 
ful. 

As you gentlemen know, the principal freight on the 
C. & 0. Railway is bituminous coal. That coal is hauled 
from the coal fields to Tidewater at Hampton Roads, a 
distance of 420 miles, for the rate of $1.25 per ton of 
2,000 pounds. Westward that coal is now distributed 
as far as the Dakotas, some going as far as Montana. The 
coal tonnage over the railroad has doubled about every six 
years for the last three six-year periods. That is an extra¬ 
ordinary increase. This State and West Virginia could not 
have been enriched as they have been without these low 


34 


rates that the railroads have been able to establish in the 
hauling of coal. Our Kanawha coal field is more than twice 
as far from the Lakes as some of the other coal fields that 
have coal of equally good quality with that on our line. 
These roads with a shorter haul necessarily can give a 
lower freight rate, and it is necessary for us to give the same 
rate to our shippers, notwithstanding the fact that we have 
to haul our coal more than two times as far as they do. 

I want to say that coal distribution to the west has become 
each year more and more a question of Lake transportation. 
In the summer time when the coal business is dull in the 
industries tributary to our road, the producers ship the coal 
to the Lakes, and it is then hauled by the cheapest trans¬ 
portation that is known in the world from the Lower Lake 
ports like Toledo to the extreme northwest ends of the 
Lakes, distances of from 700 to 1,000 miles, for thirty-five 
cents a ton. Now, some of the coal fields are 128 miles 
from these lower lake ports. Our nearest coals are very 
nearly 300 miles. We find that to haul that coal in competi¬ 
tion with these competitors of ours, we must haul our coal 
in large train loads. 

During the past fifteen years the Chesapeake & Ohio 
Railway has spent enormous sums, reducing grades, elim¬ 
inating curvature to make the hauling of big trains pos¬ 
sible, but it runs into millions of dollars. We are now able 
to haul train loads of 5,500 tons easily and safely with 
a single engine, and in that way we are able to compete 
with these more favorably located coal fields. 

Mr. Robertson: What position do you occupy, please, 

sir? 

Mr. Caples: Vice President of the Chesapeake & Ohio 
Railway Company. 

This is a comparison of some operating statistics of 
the C. & O. for 1903-1913. 

The transportation pay rolls for the fiscal year ended 
June 30th, 1913, amounted to.$6,914,570 

In through freight service the wage basis is approxi- 



35 


mately 40 per cent, in excess of the basis in 1903. In some 
classes of transportation labor the percentage has not been 
as great as 40 per cent., but in other classes, such as Tele¬ 
graph Operators, Yard Conductors and Brakemen, it has 
been much greater, the average for all transportation labor 
will approximate 40 per cent. In other words, the service 
performed in the fiscal year ended June 30th, 1913, if paid 
for at rates in effect in 1903 would have cost about.$4,938,980 

Increase. . . .$1,975,592 

Figures given below, taken from the pay rolls of Octo¬ 
ber, 1913, on the lines in Virginia, east of Clifton Forge, in¬ 
dicate the wages men in train and engine service can make 
by working practically full time. 

The earnings of 48 freight conductors averaged $145.30, 
ranging from $125. to $185. 

The earnings of 58 Freight Brakemen averaged $110.70, 
ranging from $100. to $136. 

The earnings of 14 Passenger Conductors averaged 
$167.90, ranging from $140. to $194. 

The earnings of 8 Passenger Baggagemen averaged 
$104.85, ranging from $100. to $115. 

The earnings of 15 Passenger Brakemen averaged 
$94.00, ranging from $81.00 to $110.00. 

The minimum wage of assigned passenger train crews 
making full time is— 

Conductors, $135; Baggagemen, $87; Brakemen, $81. 

The earnings of 109 Engineers averaged $172.50, ranging 
from $135. to $288. 

The earnings of 44 Firemen averaged $119.70, ranging 
from $100. to $177. 

COMPARISON—FISCAL YEARS 1913 AND 1903. 

1913 1903 

Ton Miles Freight Handled. 6,694,879,287 2,631,297,190 

Average Haul (Miles). 266 276 

Ton Mile Revenue (Mills). 4.12 4.75 

At same Average Haul and Ton Mile rate in 1913 as in 1903, the 

freight revenues would have been.$31,926,067.84 

The Revenues were. .27, 5 49,696.17 

Difference. $ 4,376,371.67 








36 


1913 1903 

Passengers one mile. 267,044,325 170,012,343 

Average Miles Carried. 45.48 57.57 

Passenger Mile Revenue.(Cents)... 2.194 2.044 

At Same Average Miles and Passenger Mile Rate in 1913 as in 1903 

the passenger revenues would have been. $6,894,991.76 

The Revenues were. 5,858,138.22 


Difference. $ 1,036,853.54 

At Same Average Freight and Passenger Rates and 
Average Haul in 1913 as in 1903, the freight and 

passenger revenues would have been.$38,821,059.60 

The Revenues were. 33,407,834.39 


Difference. $5,413,255.21—16.2% 


SHOWING THE MILEAGE OR BASING RATES 
OF WAGES IN THROUGH FREIGHT SERVICE. 



1913 

1903 



Engineers. 

. 5.25c. 

4.25c. 

Increase 1.00c. 

23.5% 

Firemen (G-6). 

. 3.10c. 

2.45c. 

Increase 0.65c. 

26.5% 

Conductors. 

. 4.10c. 

3.15c. 

Increase 0.95c. 

30.2% 

Brakemen. 

. 2.75c. 

2.10c. 

Increase 0.65c. 

31.0% 

Brakemen. 

. 2.75c. 

2.10c. 

Increase 0.65c. 

31.0% 

Per Crew. 

. 17.95c. 

14.05c. 

Increase 3.90c. 

27.7% 


Hours have been decreased approximately.10.0% 

More favorable rules established, such as held at away from Home Terminal, 

Tied upon Road, etc., would easily add. 2.3% 

Approximate Increase.40.0% 


Revenue Freight Cars in 
Service. 

Tonnage Capacity. 

Average Tonnage Capac¬ 
ity. 

Equivalent number of 
cars of 34.2 tons ca¬ 
pacity . 

Freight and Switching 

Locomotives. 

Tractive Power. 

Average Tractive Power 

(Pounds). 

Equivalent number of 
locomotives of 21,066 
pounds tractive power. 

Freight Train Miles. 

Net Tons Moved One 
Mile 

New Tons per Train 
Mile. 


1913 

1903 

Increase 

42,691 

1913 

1,873,570 

22,126 

1903 

756,380 

20,565 92.9% 
Increase 

1,117,190 147.7% 

43.9 

34.2 

9.7 

28.4% 

54,783 




678 

27,689,528 

498 

10,490,987 

180 

17,198,541 

36.1% 

163.9% 

40,840 

21,066 

19,774 

93.9% 

1,314 

7,937,054 

5,333,101 

2,603,953 

48.8% 

6,694,879,287 

2,631,297,190 

4,063,582,097 

154.4% 

843 

493 

350 

71.0% 


































37 


Equivalent Train Miles 
of 493 tons per train 


mile. 13,579,877 

Products of Mines, % 

of Total Tonnage. 74.3 54.5 19.8 36.3% 

Percentage of Empty Car 

Miles. 35.4 31.4 4.0 12.7% 


If the C. & O. had received in 1913 the same rate for 
hauling a ton a mile that it did in 1903, it would have re¬ 
ceived $4,376,000 more than it did receive in 1913; in other 
words, it had either to show a decrease in net earnings of 
that amount ($4,376,000) or it would by some economy of 
operation have been compelled to save that amount of 
money to show the same net results. The greater part of 
that saving, however, did not go to the payment of dividends 
to shareholders of the company, but, on the other hand, it 
went to the shippers on the line of this railway, enabling 
them to reach more distant markets by reason of the lower 
rates that the company charged. 

Mr. Dodson: Can I ask you a question? I understood 
you to state a moment ago that you received thirty-five 
cents per ton from the coal mines to the Great Lakes, did 
you not? 

Mr. Caples: No, sir, from Toledo to these points on 
the Lakes. 

Mr. Dodson: Will you state to the committee what 
rate you receive from the mines to Tidewater? 

Mr. Caples: One dollar and twenty-five cents per short 
ton of 2,000 pounds. 

The passage of this bill would result in railway companies 
unnecessarily and without good cause from any viewpoint 
spending many millions of dollars per year, not considering 
the many millions they have expended in the purchase of 
locomotives with sufficient capacity to haul long trains, and 
handle traffic more economically, and the large sums expend¬ 
ed in reducing grades, curves, etc. 

There can be no good cause advanced with common 
reasoning for the passage of a bill of this kind. It has been 
said that shorter trains can be run with less danger of injury 





38 


to employee and the public. This is not true and can be 
substantiated in fact, as will be later shown in this statement. 
The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company has expended for 
locomotives of large tractive power to handle in excess of 50 
car trains on the greater part of its roads, that could not be 
used economically if trains were limited to 50 cars, over 
$8,500,000. The number of such locomotives purchased, 
their type, average, and aggregate cost, are as follows: 




Average 

Total 


No. 

Cost 

Cost 

Mallet Locomotives. 

. . 63 

$33,400 

$2,104,200 

Mikado Locomotives. 

. . 50 

25,900 

1,295,000 

Consolidation G-6-7-8-9. . . 

. . 332 

15,900 

5,278,800 


445 $8,678,000 


The railway company has expended in the State of Vir¬ 
ginia alone during the last five fiscal years ending June 30th, 
1913, in reducing grades, curves, strengthening bridges and 
extensions of passing sidings to enable longer trains to be 
economically operated, $660,034,45, itemized as follows: 


Reducing Grades and Curves. $273,734.51 

Strengthening Bridges. 108,948.36 

Extension of Passing Sidings. 277,351.58 


In addition to these two items of large expenditures, it 
is shown that to operate all freight trains not in excess of 
50 cars each would be an increase in the present cost of oper¬ 
ation in the State of Virginia alone, for a period of one year, 
approximately one-half million dollars. If similar laws 
were passed in all of the States through which our Company 
operates, it would mean an increase in our present cost of 
operating freight trains of about $1,390,000 per year. 

The Chairman: Gentlemen, we will be unable to proceed 
further with the hearing at this time and will have at this 
point to adjourn until 4:00 o’clock this afternoon. 

(Adjourned until 4:00 P. M.) 









39 


February 9, 1914, 4:00 P. M. 

The Committee again met at 4:00 o’clock P. M. 

Mr. Buchanan : Mr. Geo. P. Johnson, General Manager 
of the C. & O. Pailway Company, will complete the statement 
of the C. & O., Mr. Caples having been called away. 

STATEMENT OF ME. GEO. P. JOHNSON 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: In addition to what Mr. 
Caples, our Vice President, said this morning as regards the 
situation of the C. & O. Eailway in connection with this bill, 
a brief history of the Eailway Company is not out of line at 
this point. 

This Eailway was originally started as a line from Doswell 
to Louisa Court House, and was continued on over the moun¬ 
tains through to Clifton Forge, and west from there over the 
Alleghany Mountains. At the time that the New Eiver and 
Kanawha coal fields commenced to be developed, and the provid¬ 
ing of a market for this coal, it was necessary to have an outlet 
to Tidewater and this outlet was secured by purchasing, about 
1891, the Eichmond and Alleghany Eailway, which extended 
from Clifton Forge, Virginia, down James Eiver through 
Lynchburg to Eichmond, Virginia, where it connected with that 
portion of the railway that had been built from Eichmond to 
Newport News on Tidewater. About $13,000,000 was ex¬ 
pended in the purchase and rehabilitation of this property to 
make it of such physical condition as to be able to handle the 
business as well as other freight for eastern markets at a cost 
that would enable it to make rates for its shippers to allow them 
to meet the market conditions as the tidewater coal of the C. & O. 
Eailway is in competition with that of the lines north of us 
which have a much shorter distance to haul, and in order that 
our coal people can have an open market, it was necessary to 
make such rates as will meet the rates of lines having a shorter 
haul, and in order that this may be done, our cost of transporta¬ 
tion must necessarily be at a minimum cost, which can only be 


40 


secured by low grade lines and heavy tonnage freight trains, 
which will give us such low cost of operation as is necessary to 
allow us to be in this market. 

In the year 1900, 2,550,000 tons of coal were shipped from 
the coal fields on the C. & O. Railway to the east, of which 
1,795,541 tons were tidewater. In the year 1913, 6,086,408 
tons of coal were shipped to the east, of which 3,531,202 tons 
were tidewater. It is essentially necessary for the future pro¬ 
tection of the coal field interests which are located on our rail¬ 
way, and which have spent in development approximately $35,- 
000,000, that this coal be continued east as well as a market 
established west, and nothing so jeopardizes the interest of this 
railway as legislative action of this kind, whereby the cost of 
operation will be increased to such a point that we cannot haul 
coal to the eastern or western markets in competition with other 
lines. To have a bill of this kind passed, will mean an addi¬ 
tional expense in the cost of operation on the C. & O. Railway 
per year of approximately half a million dollars—and it is di¬ 
vided among a very small percentage of the employees in Vir¬ 
ginia on this railway. 

As to the personal injury and liability of accident by reason 
of long trains, and as to the argument advanced by the sup¬ 
porters of this bill in regard to the less risks of injury to em¬ 
ployees and others in the operation of short trains as against 
long ones, the data contained in the statement attached showing 
a summary of personal injuries as a result of train accidents in 
Virginia during the last fiscal period ending June 30, 1913, 
will clearly show that there is no ground whatever for argument 
on this point. On our line in Virginia operating a train mile¬ 
age of 4,896,326 miles it is shown that only 11.43 per cent, per¬ 
sons were killed on heavy trains as against 88.57 per cent, for 
light trains, and persons injured by heavy trains only 9.94 per 
cent, as against 90.06 per cent, by light trains. I would estimate 
that the percentage of heavy trains operated by our company in 
Virginia to total train is about 45 per cent, to 50 per cent, or 
more. It would, therefore, appear that if our trains are re- 


41 


duced to the maximum of fifty cars, and as there would be a 
greater number of trains run, all of which would be classed as 
light trains, the number of killed and injured would be greater 
by a larger percentage, and the hazard of accident would he very 
materially increased, not only on account of the fact that we 
would run a larger number of trains each day, hut also on ac¬ 
count of all trains being light trains. 

Following is an analysis of the deaths and injuries caused 
by trains on the Chesapeake & Ohio of more than fifty cars and 
fifty cars or less in the State of Virginia during the year ending 
June 30th, 1913. Our statistics show that the total freight 
trains run in Virginia (Richmond and Clifton Forge Divisions) 
for one year, based on actual freight trains run year 1913, were 
as follows: 

Trains of more than 50 cars. .12,073 48 per cent. 

Trains of 50 cars or less.13,099 52 per cent. 

The trains of more than 50 cars killed no employees, injured 
14 employees. The trains of 50 cars or less killed 9 employees, 
injured 102 employees. The total train mileage in Virginia 
for one year ending June 30, 1913, was 4,896,326 miles. 

These casualties are from all causes, whether struck by 
trains, falling from trains or in train accidents. As stated 
above, not a single employee was killed on or about a train of 
more than 50 cars. Of the nine killed by trains of less than 
50 cars, two were struck by, two by falling from cars or engines, 
(while getting on or off), one while coupling and one by being 
struck by obstructions. 

The following figures give number of persons other than em¬ 
ployees killed and injured by trains of more and less than 50 
cars: 

Trains of more than 50 cars, killed 4 and injured 4. Trains 
of fifty cars or less, killed 22 and injured 61. 

Of the four people killed by trains of more than 50 cars none 
was killed in a train accident. All the four deaths- were due to 
falling from trains and while getting on or off engines or cars— 
one due to the former and three to the latter cause. 



42 


Of the twenty-two killed by trains of less than 50 cars, six 
trespassers were killed in falling from trains (getting on or off) 
and sixteen by being struck by a train. 

These figures corroborate the statement that the more trains 
run, as would be, should this bill be made a law, and the more 
employees put on the trains, of necessity the more accidents, 
deaths, and injuries. 

With reference to the parting of trains—it is true that rail¬ 
roads have trouble on this account, and the breaking in two of 
a train or bursting of an air hose at times causes serious damage 
and sometimes death or injuries, but this trouble is not confined 
to trains of more than 50 cars. 

For instance, and as an illustration, during the calendar 
year of 1913 the Chesapeake & Ohio operated in the State of 
Virginia (Clifton Forge and Richmond Divisions and Alle¬ 
ghany District) a total of 20,713 freight trains, handling more 
than 50 cars and trouble was experienced with only 807 of that 
number account trains parting. In other words, we had trouble 
from this cause with only 3.90 per cent, of the total trains oper¬ 
ated in excess of 50 cars. Trouble was experienced on this 
account with about 2.50 per cent, of the total trains operated of 
less than 50 cars; so it will be seen that there is but little differ¬ 
ence from this cause with long trains as against those operated 
with 50 cars or less. 

With regard to trainmen being kept on duty more than six¬ 
teen hours and relieved on the road account the sixteen-hour 
Federal Law: When from any cause trains are caught by this 
law, we either send a fresh crew to bring the train into its ter¬ 
minal, or if this is not possible, tie the train up on a siding and 
relieve the crew, having due regard at all times for their com¬ 
fort, etc. 

During the calendar year of 1913, on the Richmond and 
Clifton Forge Divisions, out of a total of 25,172 freight trains 
operated, only 339 were laid up on the road by the operation of 
the sixteen-hour law, the percentage of trains so laid up being 
only 1.3 per cent. 


43 


These trains were laid up for the reasons enumerated below: 

Engine failures. 34 

Yards blocked. 40 

Breaking loose or parting. 30 

Ho water (Westham) account tank burning. 12 

Meeting trains account heavy run freight.109 

Local work, switching, etc. 25 

High water, washouts. 56 

Accidents and congestions caused thereby. ..... 14 

Wire trouble. 9 

Slides . 9 

Coroner’s inquest. 1 


TOTAL .339 

Statement for the Calendar Year, 1913; the percentage 
of freight trains operating in the State of Virginia that 
had trouble account of trains parting. 

No of Percentage of Trains 

Trains Handling more than No. of Trains Not 

50 cars Trains Parting Parting Parting 

Richmond Division. . . 6,750 160 2.37 97.63 

Clifton Forge Division 5,223 275 5.27 94.73 

Alleghany District. ... 8,740 372 4.25 95.75 


Total. 20,713 807 3.90 96.10 

Trains Handling less than 
50 cars 

Richmond Division. . . 8,848 125 1.41 98.59 

Clifton Forge Division 4,251 78 1.83 98.17 

Alleghany District... . 3,672 91 2.48 97.52 


Total. 16,771 294 1.75 98.25 

All Freight Trains 

Richmond Division. . . 15,598 285 1.83 98.17 

Clifton Forge Division 9,474 353 3.73 96.27 

Alleghany District. . . . 12,412 463 3.73 96.27 


Total. 37,484 1,101 2.94 97.06 






























44 


The result of the Maximum Car Limit legislation will 
be to increase the deaths and injuries not only of railway 
employees but of travelers along the highways and in the 
streets of cities and towns. It will have the further effect 
of increasing enormously the cost of operation of railroads 
without adding in any degree to the efficiency of the public 
service. The real object of this legislation is not to pro¬ 
mote safety or expedite the public business, but is solely 
and only intended to force by legislation the employment 
of more men in train service. 

This is a letter addressed to employees of the C. & 0. 
Ry. by Mr. Stevens, the President: 

Richmond, Va., January 27th, 1914. 

TO EMPLOYEES: 

It is assumed that the men employed in the train service 
of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company do not appre¬ 
ciate the disaster that will ensue if the bill now before the 
House of Delegates of Virginia limiting the size of freight 
trains to fifty cars is passed. It is well known that, if a 
westbound train is limited to fifty empty cars, an eastbound 
train cannot be given to exceed forty loaded cars, if the 
power is equalized. The bill, if passed, means that the 
Railway Company would, in my opinion, be compelled to 
withdraw from the Tidewater coal traffic, as it could only 
be conducted at a loss. 

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway hauls Tidewater coal 
a greater distance than its competitors at the north, and 
must, in order to provide its shippers with an eastern market, 
make a rate that pays but three mills per ton per mile; 
or in other words, must haul a ton of coal three and one- 
third miles to earn one cent; or, stating it another way, a 
ton of coal must be hauled ten miles to earn one cent net 
revenue. Out of this net revenue must be provided a suffi¬ 
cient sum to pay the interest on funded debt, taxes (in¬ 
creasing yearly), and a meager dividend to stockholders. 


45 


It is reasonable to assume that any further reduction in 
the rate or increase in the cost of performing the service 
will result in the loss of the traffic. Naturally, this will 
be followed by a reduction in the number of men employed 
in the train service in Virginia, estimated at not less than 
50 per cent. 

This also applies in a measure to the Extra Crew Bill. 
The Railway Company and its employees in the train serv¬ 
ice should be equally interested in preventing the passage 
of these bills. 

(signed) GEO. W. STEVENS, President . 

Mr. Willis: Mr. Johnson, there have been several 
statements made here to the effect that the percentage of 
accidents, casualties, on short trains was greater than on 
long trains. How do you account for that? Do the roads 
haul more short trains or is there any peculiar fatality 
attached to short trains? 

Mr. Johnson: Short trains run faster. Speed is a big 
element in that. 

Mr. Willis: These casualties include persons who are 
trespassing as well as trainmen. 

Mr. Johnson: Ours are divided as to train employees 
and others. 

Mr. Robertson: What do you consider as a maximum 
efficient size of a train? 

Mr. Johnson: Depends entirely on operating condi¬ 
tions. 

Mr. Robertson: How many engines do you put in a 
train? 

Mr. Johnson: Only one. 

Mr. Robertson: On the River Division? 

Mr. Johnson: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Robertson: What do you consider a maximum 
train on that road? 

Mr. Johnson: If we hadJa^bigger ^engine we would 


46 


haul more cars—80 or 90 or 100 cars if the side tracks would 
hold them, anything that means safe and cheaper operation. 

Mr. Robertson: There certainly would be a point where 
the length of the train would be to such an extent it would 
be a matter of inadequacy and inefficiency, wouldn't it? 
You couldn’t run a train five miles long. 

Mr. Johnson: No, sir. 

Mr. Robertson: Where is the point you consider you 
can run a train efficiently? 

Mr. Johnson: I think 100 cars on the James River 
Division would be efficient. 

REMARKS OF MR. F. M. LOVE. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee , and the 
gentlemen who are appearing before the committee (7 would 
like to address the whole crowd as present ): I want to say 
in the beginning that I am here to represent no corporation, 
trust or anything of the kind. I have no man’s axe to 
grind and no political aspiration to gratify. I am here, 
gentlemen, and I will tell you what brings me here, I will 
tell you what causes me to appear before you. It is that 
I am doing something to protect a railroad that has done 
so much for me, the Virginian Railway. I want to say 
that I love my old county of Lunenburg. When we were 
isolated and cut off from the outside world and all the 
counties of Virginia were alive, Lunenburg was far in the 
rear, and you have no idea how it crushed my heart to see 
the down-trodden condition of my old county; and, when 
a railroad proposed to build through there (I think it was 
called the Mt. Airy Railroad) and they said they would 
come through Lunenburg County upon the proposition 
that Lunenburg would vote a hundred thousand dollars 
to that road, I stumped the county in favor of the Mt. 
Airy Railroad; I spoke in season and out of season; I 
made the most impassioned appeal to my people to vote 
that bond issue that has been made in Lunenburg for many 


47 


a year. The bond issue over-whelmingly carried. We 
thought the Mt. Airy Railroad was coming through our 
county and give us connection with the outside world, but 
that bubble burst; notwithstanding that vote of a hundred 
thousand dollars it never came. The Bible says “ Dis¬ 
appointment sinks the heart of man, and deferred hope 
makes the soul sick.” Disappointed at heart and sick at 
soul, I thought prosperity would never come to the old 
county I loved so tenderly, but after a while the prospec¬ 
tors came around and said that probably the Virginian 
Railway would be built, and they said they proposed to 
locate the line either through Lunenburg or Mecklenburg 
County. They said Mecklenburg had proposed to donate 
the right of way, and, if Lunenburg would donate the 
right-of-way, in all probability the road would come through 
our county. They appointed a committee at a mass meet¬ 
ing of citizens, one of which I was, to go around and 
see the people through whose land the railroad would pass. 
The old man before you now took to the saddle, asking his 
people to donate the right of way to the Virginian Railway. 
With unanimity they agreed to do it, and the road was 
located through Lunenburg; but, after a while, for some 
cause, I know not what, the Virginian Railway determined 
not to accept the donation we so generously proposed to 
make, but paid for every foot of land along that railroad. 
That was mighty good. Our citizens got that amount, 
but still we were willing, in order to obtain the road, to 
pay them. Now, gentlemen, when I walked out in the 
springtime in my old Lunenburg and heard the snort of 
the iron horse as it came down on its way to the city by the 
sea, you have no idea how joy came to my heart, to think 
that prosperity had come at last that we had waited for so 
long. 

Now, my friends, you who are here asking for this maxi¬ 
mum car limit, let me say that my sympathy has always 
been with the working man. I am a working man myself. 
I came out of the war, a Confederate soldier, only nineteen 


48 


years of age. All of our property was taken. My parents 
owned slaves by the hundred, I was poor, so poor. Im¬ 
mediately after the war I married. It was not but a little 
while before a large family came to my home of boys and 
girls to cheer the old man up. Let me tell you I have 
found that life was not an empty dream. My sympathies 
go to the working man because I am a working man. 

I rise before the mocking bird warbles her song, and 
I have toiled until the horned owls hoot. 

I am able to look at this thing in a disinterested manner, 
and I say it would be wrong, it would be disastrously wrong 
to the old Virginian Railway, that has spent so many 
million dollars to have a splendid grade to the sea, to have 
to have the number of cars limited to fifty. Why, gentle¬ 
men, they go by Kenbridge every day with a hundred cars. 
Now, there are only three railroads affected by this bill 
in Virginia, the Norfolk & Western, the C. & O. and the 
Virginian. The maximum number of cars hauled by the 
C. & 0. is ninety, the maximum number hauled by the 
Virginian is one hundred, and on the Norfolk & Western, 
sixty. Now, whereas it will cut off ten per cent, from the 
revenues of the Norfolk & Western, it will cut off forty per 
cent, from the revenues of the C. & 0. and it will cut off 
fifty per cent from the revenues of the Virginian. I am 
before you in the interest of a road that has done so much 
for me, looking at it in a fair and square and disinterested 
light; and I say it would absolutely be wrong to cut down 
that road in its infancy. The Virginian has just been built; 
it has not had times to double track the road; the old 
Virginian has had to fight her way as she went. I am 
acquainted with conditions on the Virginian on the western 
end of it. You go out there to the great Winding Gulf 
region, the greatest coal producing region on earth, where 
it runs twenty-eight miles around, and they come so close 
together that in going up that gulf on one side is the Vir¬ 
ginian and on the other side is the C. & 0., two great finan¬ 
cial giants, contending which shall govern the shipping 


49 


interests of that country. Now, my friends, I want to 
say to the working men, you brakemen and conductors 
and employees of this road that are here present, my sym¬ 
pathies go not only towards you but towards the working 
men up in the mountains, humble men that dig coal way 
back in the bowels of the earth. They dig the dusty dia¬ 
mond where the sun never shines and the flowers never 
bloom. My sympathies go out to those families, too. 
There may be representatives here of the C. & 0. road. 
I desire to say nothing disrespectful of this line and those 
people representing that magnificent road, but I do say 
this: When they went into that coal mining country there 
was no competitor; the C. & 0. road could say to those 
men,'who went into the bowels of the earth to dig their 
coal, the price that should be paid them. Don’t you 
know old David said “Let me not fall into the hands of 
man.” The prophet came to David and said “You have 
committed a great transgression. Choose of three evils, 
whether you would fall before your enemies six months 
or three years or fall into the hands of Almighty God for 
three days.” David says “Let me not fall into the hands 
of man.” I used to think that David was a strange man, 
that he would prefer to fall into the hands of an insulted and 
angry God rather than into the hands of men, and, if I 
was in his place, I would have drawn my two-edged sword 
and fought to the last ditch. But David just deliberately 
chose to fall into the hands of an insulted God rather than 
into the hands of man. It was mighty bad for these coal pro¬ 
ducing people in the mountains when they were entirely 
under the jurisdiction of a single road when there was no 
competitor to take out the coal from that country. The 
Virginian came as a great boon and blessing to those 
miners out there. When the C. & 0. found the Virginian 
was coming, and her right of way had been surveyed, they 
hastened their work force and dug a tunnel through Jen¬ 
nings (?) Gap. Then came the greatest suit there ever was 
in the courts of the United States, and the Virginian forced 


50 


her right through there. Thus she has been forcing her way 
step by step and wherever she has gone she has been a 
blessing to the poor man. She developed our country. 
If you will go down to Kenbridge, which is the principal 
town—it is not the principal town as far as numbers are 
concerned, but in point of financial blessing to the country, 
Kenbridge is headquarters. Six years ago, before the Vir¬ 
ginian came, there was but one little post office there (the 
owner of that property is here to-day and will address you), 
nothing but a little store and post office. When you see 
what has been achieved at Kenbridge on account of the 
Virginian Railway, you will be astonished. You would 
not suppose it was possible by fair, square, and legitimate 
means that there could have been accomplished what has 
been done. Look at the great warehouses, the magnifi¬ 
cent church. Look at the wholesale stores that have been 
established. Look at the thousands and thousands of 
dollars worth of tobacco sold every day. When you see 
the financial interest that has been developed at Kenbridge, 
you would suppose that some great magician had waved 
his wand over that country and these things has sprung 
up by magic. But it was on account of the Virginian Rail¬ 
way having come there as a blessing to our people; and 
we contend that the rights of the Virginian Railway should 
be respected and that they should be permitted to carry 
coal in the long trains that pass by there now of 100 cars. 
Why, gentlemen, to limit them to 50, would cut in half 
the revenue of that little infant railroad, for it is yet in its 
infancy, it has not had time to double track like the Nor¬ 
folk & Western or like the C. & 0. She has been doing 
all that a great philanthropic institution could do. Now, 
in her infancy, when she is just beginning to develop, when 
she has just commenced to be a blessing to the working 
people here and there and everywhere she goes along, 
ought we to limit her power to gain revenue? I say it 
is wrong. I beg you that you do no such thing. Gentle¬ 
men, let me tell you, I was at the formal opening of the 


51 


Virginian, and I was introduced to that great philanthropist, 
H. H. Rogers, and I am so glad before he passed away I 
had the pleasure of shaking the hand of that splendid man 
and looking into his face. Whenever we speak of these 
things, we must stop and pay tribute of respect to the 
memory of H. H. Rogers, a man who has built to his memory 
a monument more lasting than any marble slab that could 
possibly have been erected. The Bible says there are 
certain things that cover a multitude of sins. I believe it. 
In my estimation what H. H. Rogers has done for Lunen¬ 
burg has been a blessing to our people and has covered a 
multitude of sins, and since then I have never said a word 
against the Standard Oil Company. I used to give the 
Standard Oil Company hail Columbia and rub it in, but 
after this road was built I commenced looking at it in 
another light. I said, “Well, I declare, it is strange. I 
always looked with such contempt upon the Standard Oil 
Company.” I look back now and I can see for a fact that 
the Standard Oil Company is selling us oil a great deal 
cheaper than 20 years ago, and they are giving us a better 
article of oil. They are selling us better oil to-day than 
twenty years ago, and that fine oil is being sold to us cheaper 
that it was then. I never thought that until the Standard 
Oil Company built this road through old Lunenburg. Now, 
when the violets gather themselves a home upon the hill¬ 
side, when the zephyrs lift and the breezes go forth, I 
walk upon my Lunenburg farm, lift my head to Almighty 
God and thank him that a railroad has come to my native 
land and prosperity to my people. Gentlemen, don’t let 
this bill pass; don’t cripple that magnificent road; and 
I hope that these gentlemen here, the working people here 
that are trying to push their bill, will look at the things 
we have been contending against, and that they may say 
that the old man from Lunenburg was telling the truth. 

Mr. Dodson: May I ask you a question? I understood 
you to say, Mr. Love, that you represented the good old 


52 


county of Lunenburg. Does the C. & 0. or Norfolk & 
Western run through Lunenburg? 

Mr. Love: No, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: Why are you particularly interested in 
the C. & 0. and Norfolk & Western? 

Mr. Love: I just wanted to show the comparative 
difference between the three roads and to show that this 
bill would be more disastrous to the Virginian than to the 
other roads. I said I did not want to say anything against 
the C. & 0. Didn’t I say so? And I stated nothing but 
the fact, not that it should be against the C. & O., but that 
it might show that this bill was more injurious to the Vir¬ 
ginian than the others. 

Mr. Dodson: Have you ever ridden on one of these 100 
car trains on the Virginian? 

Mr. Love: No, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: Have you ever been around the railroad 
when one of them had a drawhead out? 

Mr. Love: No, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: You have heard that some accidents of 
the kind happen on the road. 

Mr. Love: Yes, sir, I have heard of them happening. 

Mr. Kennedy of Lunenburg is here and will address you. 

REMARKS OF MR. KENNEDY. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

I brought along Mr. Love to do my talking, so I will not 
take up over three or four minutes. You can see how well 
you have done it. I am from the little town of Kenbridge, 
and, to quote the cartoonist, “I am the one who put the 
Ken in Kenbridge.” That is where it got its name—a 
friend of mine, Mr. Bridgeforth, and myself. We have a 
peculiar condition down there. I believe every man in 
it is friendly to the railroad which runs through it. That is 
a peculiar thing, and I believe it is due more to the railroad 
than to the people. I think we have the best people I know 


53 


anything about anywhere. I do believe that we have found 
the Virginian Railway very responsive to any request that 
we have made of them; and, aside from the fact that the 
town, of course, is due in a large measure to the railroad 
coming through there and giving us shipping facilities, I 
believe the success of it is due in a large measure to the co¬ 
operation the railroad has shown towards helping whatever 
was good for the town. I was mayor of the town several 
years and have been greatly interested in the business 
men’s association, from which association I come here to-day. 
I do not know of any request we have ever made of the 
Virginian that they did not take up and consider and show 
us either that it was impossible to do or grant us what we 
asked them; and, therefore, we feel very kindly towards the 
road. Mr. Love referred to the tobacco industry there. 
We have a tobacco market that sold over 3,000,000 pounds 
of bright tobacco last year, and will sell considerably more 
this year. The Virginian Railway takes care of that. 
This is a right big statement to make, but if the Virginian 
Railway had 10 competitors in there, I don’t believe they 
could give more attention to getting the traffic out and 
getting that in that is coming in there than the Virginian 
does; and, as soon as this maximum train bill was intro¬ 
duced, as soon as some of the boys at home read of it in 
the paper, that it had been introduced—I believe some of 
them in Richmond heard about it, and they came back, 
and we were having a meeting of our board of trade for 
another purpose, a different road, a public road, which you 
gentlemen will hear from later. We were having that, and 
brother Love has got that on his hands yet. Anyhow they 
were having that question up as to whether the business 
men would endorse or reject this public road bill. Some¬ 
body brought up this maximum train bill; and I suppose 
there were 4 or 5 letters sent out to the Virginian Railway 
people right away, without any solicitation on the part of 
the Virginian Railway people, offering services of a good 
many different citizens there to oppose this bill if the 


54 


Virginian wanted it done; that we appreciated what the 
Virginian had done for us; and I was one of the men that 
wrote to the President or Vice President, Mr. Dupuy. 
Anyhow I wrote to him, and he wrote me thanking me for 
the letter. I wrote him what action had been taken; and 
Mr. Webb and 2 or 3 others wrote to our Representative, 
Mr. Love, and to our Senator, telling them that we wished 
they would hold up action on the bill awhile to give the 
Virginian a chance to see if they wanted to oppose it; and 
that we were in sympathy with the Virginian. Of course, 
we know nothing in the world about railroads. I don’t 
know anything in the world about them. Whenever I 
get on them I have to pay my way just like the other man. 
All I know about it is, it doesn’t look like to me or to most 
of us that the Virginian could stand cutting its trains in 
two in this manner. Also I will say this, that in my travels 
up and down the Virginian I have seen very few wrecks of 
long trains. This gentleman over here asked Mr. Love 
what about the Norfolk & Western and C. & 0. I have 
nothing to do with those, I want you to understand; I am 
talking about the Virginian. The Virginian runs these 
long trains very slowly; in fact, people say they run all 
of them slowly; but we make about 30 miles an hour on our 
passenger trains and stop everywhere; but the roadbed is 
in such a good condition I suppose that is why people think 
they are running as slow as they are. But these big trains 
do run slowly; and as far as I have ever heard of I don’t 
know of any wreck that has occurred on the division where 
I live. I don’t know that I would have heard of it, because 
I am not familiar with the railroad service at all, but I have 
never heard of an accident over there attributed to a long 
train. The business men of Kenbridge asked me to come 
down here and asked me to do what I could, and there are 
several more of us in the city now. They are up at the 
Grand Lodge in this city. I thought Mr. Love was going 
to do all the talking, but I thought I would get up and say 
something anyhow. I thank you for your attention. I 


55 


Hope that on account of the Virginian you will not do any¬ 
thing that will hurt us, because if you hurt them much it 
will hurt Kenbridge. That is what we are talking about. 
We don’t care anything about the Virginian from a loving 
standpoint; it is purely a business standpoint. 

Mr. Dodson: Do you happen to know anything about 
the amount of money the Virginian Railway earns on one 
of these 100 car trains? 

Mr. Kennedy: I have heard one of the conductors say 
one time it was a right good amount. It didn’t concern me. 

Mr. Dodson: You know nothing about it? 

Mr. Kennedy: No, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: Are you in a position to state positively 
that reducing these trains to 50 as a minimum would put the 
Virginian Railway in the hands of a receiver? 

Mr. Kennedy: No, I would not, more than this; I will 
say this; that very often the Virginian has given us improve¬ 
ments from time to time. Recently they went to some 
expense there to give us a crossing. I suppose it cost 
$2,000. We have been after the Virginian for some years. 
They said year before last when we first asked for improve¬ 
ments there, which they afterwards made, that they had to 
go very slowly because they were not earning anything. 
As to whether they were earning anything I don’t know. 
That was the reply they made to me when I was mayor 
of the town. 

Mr. Dodson: You are naturally interested in the 
Virginian Railway because it runs through Lunenburg 
County and service on the road is good. 

Mr. Kennedy: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Willis: Mr. Chairman, I suggest that, after these 
gentlemen finish, there may be something on the other side. 

The Chairman: I think they said they wanted to be 
heard. 

Mr. Dodson: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Willis: What I was going to suggest was this; that 
we set some time within which each side should be heard. I 


56 


understand we are to conclude this hearing this afternoon, 
are we not? 

The Chairman: We would like to. There is no time 
set for it. 

REMARKS OF MR. J. BERLINGETT. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

For the benefit of members of the committee who have 
only heard of the Virginian probably casually, I might say 
that the road runs from the mining country in West Vir¬ 
ginia through the State of Virginia to Tidewater at Norfolk. 
Its principal mileage is in the State of Virginia, and the 
State of Virginia derives the principal benefit as the re¬ 
sult of the road having been built. When the Virginian 
was built, its purpose was to develop territory lying doimant, 
not only in the State of West Virginia in the coal regions, 
but also in the State of Virginia as well. The Virginian 
road was built with the knowledge that its principal busi¬ 
ness would be very low class revenue bearing traffic. It 
followed, therefore, necessarily followed, that the road 
would have to be so constructed to admit handling heavy 
freight trains, otherwise it could not exist at all, it could 
never have gotten into existence. It forced its way across the 
State of Virginia on a low grade at very heavy cost. The per¬ 
centage of coal is 85 per cent, of the total freight business of the 
Virginian road. Now, I am going to give you a few figures. I 
am not going to overburden you with statistics and I am not 
going to say very much; but what I will give you I would 
like the committee to give very careful consideration to 
because it is mighty important to the State of Virginia. 
The Virginian Railway gets less money for handling a ton 
of freight a mile than any railroad in the world. To show 
you a comparison and to show what the coal carrying roads 
are doing in the State of Virginia, I would just like to read 
this statement. The English railways receive over 23 mills 
for handling a ton of freight one mile; that is the average for 


57 


handling a ton of freight one mile. The German and French 
railways receive 14 mills for handling a ton of freight one mile. 
The average of American railroads is 7 4-10 mills. The 
Virginian Railway receives an average for handling one 
ton of freight one mile 3 4-10 mills. Just think of that! 
Just think of that as an asset for the State of Virginia. For 
handling a ton of coal a mile the Virginian Railway re¬ 
ceives but 3 mills, less than one third of one cent. The 
Virginian Railway has to haul a ton of coal more than 
six miles to get enough money to buy a two-cent postage 
stamp; at the same time these gentlemen here, the con¬ 
ductors,. are asking that the Virginian Railway be killed 
off. The Virginian Railway as an asset to this State of 
Virginia is equal to a second Panama Canal from one side 
of the State to the other. If this bill is made a law, it 
would mean that the Virginian Railway would have to 
run in a year 4,678 additional trains, or 539,000 train miles. 
It would cost the Virginian Railway to run these additional 
trains $982,000. There would be other expenses besides 
that would foot it up over $1,000,000.00 It would mean 
absolute financial ruin for the Virginian Railway. There 
would not be any question at all about it. The railroad 
would not be able to pay interest on its mortgage bonds; 
and it is mortgaged for less than one half the actual money 
put in the construction of the road. The other half gets 
no interest at all, never did as yet. Mr. Dodson spoke 
about a receivership. The Virginian Railway could not 
keep out of a receivership if this bill is made a law. This 
State cannot by one farthing increase the rates on the 
Virginian Railway; at the same time this bill would mean 
cutting the rates on the Virginian Railway in two. That 
is not all by any means. The Virginian Railway, in addi¬ 
tion to this expense for a low grade line, has in use loco¬ 
motives of modern type, powerful engines, and is equipped 
with the strongest steel car equipment. Mr. Dodson, or 
some person, spoke some time ago about the troubles of a 
crew carrying drawbars. The Virginian Railway has a 


58 


record of four years without having pulled out one single 
drawbar in its whole service. 

Mr. Willis: What is its record in regard to bursting 
air hose? 

Mr. Berlingett: I will come to that later. Short 
trains wouldn’t overcome that, you know. 

If this bill was made a law the Virginian Railway would 
at once have to go out and purchase double the number of 
locomotives that they now have, although at the same time 
they have plenty of locomotive power to handle all of their 
present traffic comfortably and successfully, because we 
can show that our big trains are entirely successful. How 
would the Virginian Railway be able to do that with im¬ 
paired credit? We could not go out and get any money, 
because we would show that our business was being done 
at a loss. Now there would be but one thing left to do, 
and that would be curtailment of traffic at its source; in 
other words limit the output of the coal mines. How is 
that going to help the conductors who present this bill? 
Either that would have to be done or the coal would go into 
other channels, to the west or somewhere; it could not come 
through Virginia because it could not be hauled except at a 
loss. 

Mr. Willis: That is just the point, if you will excuse 
me, I have heard advanced. I would like to know some¬ 
thing about it. I have heard the argument advanced that 
coal in that way would not be hauled to Norfolk or Newport 
News either, could not be hauled. 

Mr. Berlingett: Except at a loss. We could not stand 
that very long. It could be hauled, but at a loss. That is 
very easily figured out. It would cost us a million dollars, 
and we haven’t got a million dollars over our interest now 
on one-half of the cost of the railway. We don’t earn that 
much now. 

Now, we have heard a good deal about this bill as a 
measure of safety. It is put up as a reason for the bill, I 
presume. I do not believe that any more erroneous claim 


59 


could be brought forward. There are more people killed 
and injured on the Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, 
mile for mile, than on any railroad in Virginia. Now the 
reason is plain: There are more trains run. Isn't it 
reasonable to say that the more trains you put on the road, 
the more men are involved and the more accidents you are 
going to have, and the more men will be injured and killed? 
Isn't it reasonable that if the Virginian ran a lot of short 
trains, there would be more people hurt than if they were 
running a few long trains. I have a few statistics on that 
point, too. 

Mr. Robertson: What do you consider the length of a 
train should be on your road for safety and efficiency? 

Mr. Berlingett: Depends on the part of the road. 

Mr. Robertson: Aren't you an expert in the handling 
and running of trains? 


Mr. Berlingett: 
Mr. Robertson: 
maximum train? 
Mr. Berlingett: 
Mr. Robertson: 
Mr. Berlingette: 


I have had some experience. 
What do you consider would 


be 


I have never figured that question. 
That is what I want to know. 

I can tell you what we are doing. At 
the present time we are handling on parts of the road in 
Virginia 80 loaded cars. On other portions we have han¬ 
dled 100 cars. On the same part of the line we have han¬ 
dled successfully, and made the trip over a 125 mile division 
in 9 hours with 125 loads; so you see we are not overloading 
our engines or trains. Since the Virginian Railway has 
been in operation, about five years, there has not occurred 
on the line a single death, the cause of which had anything 
whatever to do with running long trains. In connection 
with personal injuries during the period of two years ending 
last June, 1913 (I am taking the record for the entire road, 
because we run 100 per cent, big trains in Virginia), on 
trains of 50 cars or over there was one person injured in 
every 498 trains run, or one to every 57,270 train miles; 
while on trains of less than 50 cars one person was injured 


60 


to every 221 trains, or one to every 24,341 train miles. 
Thus it will be seen that the number injured on short trains 
was greater by more than 100 per cent, than the long trains. 

Mr. Robertson: How do you account for that? 

Mr. Berlingett: A short train brings in its wake a 
lot of accidents that do not go with long trains. The trains 
run faster. You can’t hold them down. They get off the 
track more and there are more men involved, and they 
naturally hurt more people and catch more people at high¬ 
way crossings; and I think that has been explained and that 
accounts for it largely. But this is the record. I am not 
taking isolated cases of things that happened on long trains. 
Of the persons injured during the two-year period mentioned 
on long trains only two conductors (the men who are asking 
for this bill) were injured. One of those had a knuckle 
pin fall on his toe. The other was knocked dowm in a ca¬ 
boose when it was struck by a switching engine in the yard. 
It was mentioned here this morning about one of our officials 
being injured. That same gentleman who was injured 
appeared before this committee two or three days after 
the occurrence. He did not seem to be very badly crip¬ 
pled up. He simply lost his balance on one of our trains 
and struck his head, but did not hurt himself. It was the 
lone case that Mr. Dodson brought up in connection with 
the Virginian Railway. It is not worth talking about ex¬ 
cept as a basis of showing how little does happen on these 
long trains. 

Mr. E. W. Knight: How many drawheads have you 
pulled out in the long trains? 

Mr. Berlingett: I said that we had four years back of 
us without a single case of pulling a drawhead out. 

There is also a great deal said about the hardship and 
the number of hours put in on road trips and getting caught 
on this sixteen-hour law. In our long freight train dis¬ 
trict the trips average from terminal to terminal (we have 
districts of 126 miles) nine hours and forty-eight minutes. 
During the past year there occurred only twelve instances 


61 


in Virginia of train crews on trains of over 50 cars tying up 
on the road out of 5,979 trains run, so that a man would 
run a train about 500 days before this awful sixteen-hour 
law would catch him. That is, it would average that. 
The causes of these trains tying up were as follows: Six 
were tied on account of the line being blocked by derailment 
(there would have been more if there were short trains); two 
on account of bridges washed out; one by a bridge burning 
up and one by the engine not steaming. That is in the 
whole year. And two in the whole year on account of 
breaking in two. The average delay to all trains of over 
50 cars run in Virginia, on account of breaking in two (and, 
mind you, that average represents all big trains) is 8 min¬ 
utes for each train. 

A Committeeman: That is from bursted air hose or 
breaking in two? 

Mr. Berlingett: Yes, sir, breaking in two or something 
causing trouble. There would be just as many air hose on 
a short train and they would burst as quick or quicker; so 
that doesn’t enter into it really. 

The Virginian Railway was known from its very inception 
as a line that was properly adapted to and in order to 
exist would have to run long trains. The men taking em¬ 
ployment in train and engine service on the Virginian Rail¬ 
way were aware of this fact at the time they entered the 
service. These men made no complaint at that time and 
they are making no complaint now. 

A Committeeman: Do you mean the employees on your 
road, your engineers and conductors, are making no com¬ 
plaint on this point? 

Mr. Berlingett: In our long train territory they made 
no complaint, knowing that we handled nothing but long 
trains when they entered our service, and they are making 
none now. 

The bill could not have anything but the very worst 
effect on the railways of the State, and on the State itself, 
and on the employees also. 


62 


I wish to thank you for the opportunity you gave to hear 

me. 

Mr. Willis: What is the average grade on the Virginian? 

Mr. Berlingett: Where we handle our long trains we 
handle them with one locomotive, and the average against 
the loaded movement is two-tenths of one per cent.; that 
is about 10 feet to the mile. 

Mr. Willis: Does that include your road from Norfolk 
to Princeton? 

Mr. Berlingett: We have one six-tenths grade of seven 
miles west of Roanoke. 

Mr. Willis: How does that compare with the other 
cross-state roads, do you know? 

Mr. Berlingett: The C. & O. have about the same 
grade very nearly. 

Mr. Willis: Would you say as a practical railroad man 
that handling a long train, say a 100-car train, on a 
greater grade than the Virginian uses, would be more 
dangerous than using it on the Virginian grade? 

Mr. Berlingett: Well, I would not say that, with 
equipment and power to handle the train. 

Mr. Willis: What I am getting at is this: I propose 
to ask the advocates of this bill when they come back again 
if they have any suggestions to make along the line of 
limiting the length of trains in proportion to the grade on 
which they run. What do you think of that? 

Mr. Berlingett: That would not be a good proposition. 
The railroads cannot afford to have their trains limited at all. 
There is no use talking, it is either one thing or the other. 
They have got to go into bankruptcy or they have got to 
be let alone when it comes to handling their trains. 

Mr. Willis: So far as you know, then, there would be 
no limit that should or ought to be set. 

Mr. Berlingett: No, sir, there is no compromise. 

Mr. Willis: The only limit being the physical limit 
that is placed on the number of cars that you can handle. 

Mr. Berlingett: Yes, sir. The railway itself will do 
that. 


63 


REMARKS OE MR. W. H. WELLS. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : I do not 
know that I am a speaker at all, and I have no statistics or no 
papers to offer in this connection at all. I claim to have the 
distinction, however, of handling more cars per day’s work in 
the last four years than any other man in the United States. 

Mr. Dodson: May I ask you a question? 

Mr. Wells: Yes, sir. - 

Mr. Dodson: Whom do you represent ? 

Mr. Wells: I am representing W. H. Wells at the present 
time. I am an employee of the Virginian Railroad. 

Mr. Dodson: You are not representing the Virginian Rail¬ 
road ? 

Mr. Wells: Yes, sir, I am here in the employee of the Vir¬ 
ginian Railroad to state facts. 

Mr. Dodson: All right, sir, proceed. 

Mr. Wells: I will say to you, gentlemen, that I have not 
been coached one minute. I don’t know what the Virginian 
Railroad people expect me to say. I am going to say to you facts 
as I understand them in reference to handling long trains. I 
have handled the longest train (and I have the movement of that 
train in my possession at the present time) that was ever pulled 
through the State of Virginia. Mr. Burlingett spoke of it as 
a nine hour train. I will say for Mr. Burlingett’s information 
as well as you people that it was handled in less than nine hours, 
station to station, and I have the time in my pocket and will 
show you. How, in reference to handling long trains: My 
friend, Mr Dodson, this morning told you gentlemen of this 
committee, or tried to point out to you where it was dangerous 
to handle long trains. I will admit that it is dangerous to handle 
long trains or short trains. His idea is to cut these trains in 
two, as at present, or limit them to fifty cars. The train that I 
pull day in and day out every day in the month is 100 cars, 100 
loads one way and 100 empties the other. I will say that in the 
month of August I made thirty-four days, that is, thirty-four 


64 


times over the road; in the month of September I made thirty- 
two times over the road; in October thirty-three times over the 
road; in November thirty-three days, and have worked to the 
present time since August, and have kept account and I have the 
first minute’s overtime to ever make. For you gentlemen’s bene¬ 
fit, I wish to say that overtime is paid to employees after we are 
on the road eleven hours on our road, which is figured on a basis 
of eleven miles per hour. I want to say further that we consider 
we get paid for what we do; and I wish to say to you right now 
that any railroad man in the State of Virginia gets paid for 
what he does, hut the time will never come when I, as a railroad 
man, will get paid for the risk I run or for the trust that is put 
in my hands. That is a fact. The gentleman over there tried 
to picture to you that the long trains were the root of all evil. 
I am the man that is responsible for the braking of this train; 
it is in my hands to manipulate it. We figure as a mechanical 
basis to use braking power of eighty-five per cent, of the light 
weight of cars; at the present time with our 100,000 capacity 
cars it figures up twenty-two per cent, on the load weight. In 
the last thirty days, or last sixty days, on some railroads vitally 
affected by this law if it goes into effect, tests have been made 
with 70-ton cars, or 144,000 pounds capacity cars that figured 
85 per cent, on the light weight, and on the loaded weight the 
ratio was below sixteen per cent. I handle 800 wheels with a 
brake shoe on every wheel. These gentlemen would have you 
cut that down to fifty cars, or give me 400 wheels with which 
to do that braking. These gentlemen on this side of the house, 
these railroad men, have already asked for bids on 100-ton cars. 
Gentlemen, it is not the number of cars I pull that interests me, 
but it is the weight I pull. He would have me thundering down 
over this track with 100-ton cars, fifty of them, with half the 
wheels to do the braking with. 

Now, with reference to handling trains successfully: I can 
say for the benefit of you people that I have handled these long 
trains since the Virginian Kailroad was built. I am the only 
man who has stayed in the through freight service and not taken 


65 


a local or work train, of the older men. I am at the present time 
the oldest through freight man on the Virginian Railroad. I 
prefer it to the local freight; I prefer it to the shorter trains 
because I am not hampered by any switching, and for that rea¬ 
son have been continually in the service, and I made the asser¬ 
tion that I had handled more cars than any man on the Vir¬ 
ginian, if not in the United States, per day’s work; and I have 
got the first time yet to ever have a serious accident that was 
traceable in any way to a long train. The only accident I have 
ever had since I have been on the road was with a shorter train 
of 80 cars, which was caused by a broken flange. Row, gentle¬ 
men, these people have not talked to me. I don’t know whether 
I am trampling on the railroad companies’ toes or not; it doesn’t 
make any difference; these are facts with me. You who have 
kept up with railroad building in the last ten years know that 
the appliances for railroad work have gone forward by leaps and 
bounds save in one, and that is the loaded car wheel. There is 
no improvement on the car wheel in the last ten years, that is, 
in any way at all in the ratio to the handling of trains and the 
weight they are supposed to carry. It is true we have the rolled 
steel wheels. If you make a wheel hard enough so that the 
flange will not cut sharp, you have got a wheel that the flange 
is so hard that it will probably break going over frogs. If you 
make it so it will not break it is so soft it has to be taken out 
and turned down. When I went railroading (which is some 
years ago, because I am old enough to have a son running an 
engine) I remember the first twenty-ton car I ever saw, a coal 
car on the Big Tour Road, and I looked at it as a marvel. I 
remember a set of wheels that were put on a locomotive I was 
running last June, and an employee of the R. F. & P. Railroad 
visited me at my home and went back a third time to look at 
those wheels; it was a marvel to him, a man who had rim an 
engine on the Southern and C. & O. and is a passenger man on 
the R. F. & P.; he went back a third time to look at that pair of 
wheels because they were so heavy. Do you know what they 
weighed? They weighed 940 pounds to the wheel. Five years 


66 


ago the heaviest wheel that ever was brought on the Virginian 
weighed 720 pounds, when the railroad was built. These wheels 
were increased in size, and there was something evidently wrong 
because it was put in in June and taken out Christmas Day. It 
was so heavy they couldn’t chill it, and it had to be taken out. 
How, do you want to add the weight of a 100-car train and put 
it in a 50-car train and ask me to go thundering through the 
country with a braking power of one-half ? I don’t want to do 
it. 

Mr. RoVertson: Do you think a 100-car train of 50 tons 
each, a 100-car train of that size, would be safer than 200,000 
pounds ? 

Mr. Wells: I say to you I can do a better job of braking 
and a safer job of braking because I have a greater ratio to 
weight on that car. 

Mr. Roberts: Didn’t you say they were ordering larger 
cars ? 

Mr. Wells: Ho, sir, I said they had already asked for bids 
on these cars to find out what they would cost; and I will also 
say that the Master Car Builders Association, which meets in 
June of each year at Atlantic City, was asked for specifications 
of what they would consider would have to be necessary for 
drawheads on cars of over 50 ton capacity. These trainmen will 
tell you that an engineer occasionally gets on a high horse and 
jerks out a drawhead, as they stated to you. We say break a 
knuckle. That is what we do on our road once in a while, or an 
air hose bursts once in a while. They have given specifications 
for these drawheads. Mr. Dodson told you this morning that 
drawheads weighed 700 pounds. If I am not badly mistaken 
the present drawhead weighs between four and five hundred 
pounds, and the specification given by the Master Car Builders 
at Atlantic City last June was for a 740-pound drawhead, ex¬ 
clusive of the knuckle, which weighed 140 pounds. We break 
knuckles once in a while. I have broken some in my time. I 
had a conductor tell me the other day (he is in the house at the 
present time, but has his hands tied and can’t express an opinion) 


67 


that he believed he could count the knuckles on one hand that I 
had broken in a year. There is a dispatcher in the house, who 
will tell you, or who can tell you, that he has never gotten a 
delay on me from breaking a knuckle on a 100-car train; but we 
do break them once in a while. Now, just picture the cripples 
you would have in the State of Virginia on railroads if they had 
to trot up alongside a 50-car train with 140 pounds on their 
back to put it in when we get mad and jerk it out. I tell you, 
you will cause more delays on freight trains; there are bound to 
be more delays and accidents from this cause than there is at the 
present time. 

As to what Mr. Burlingett said in reference to a conductor. 
I was one of the engineers that was affected by that letter that 
was written. The letter was actually written and written by 
E. L. Reed, a member of the O. R. C., the very next man for 
passenger service on our road, I had engine 740 which pulls 100 
cars every day. We had a surplus of those engines, and during 
the time some of the regular men’s engines were in the shop, 
they allowed the younger men to use these heavier engines in 
place of the ones that pulled eighty cars, and he, being one o£ 
the younger men, or the youngest man, was not lucky enough to 
get it, and he wrote the Superintendent a letter and made a big 
kick because he didn’t have a heavy engine that could handle 
100 cars. He preferred it to a shorter train because it was an 
easier job. That is the fact. The conductor wrote it. I have 
been snubbed and I have been called names and I have had let¬ 
ters written to me since I have been here, warning me to stay 
away from Richmond. I didn’t come here to testify in this thing 
at all, not at all. I came here about my own business on a trip 
to Washington, and was stopped here and asked to tell what I 
knew; and it is plain facts with me. I am going to tell you that 
every engineer on the Virginian Railroad, on the first and second 
divisions, a hundred per cent, strong, turned down this bill, 
every one of them. 

A Committeeman : In what way was it put up to you ? 

Mr. Wells: It was put up to us the way the bill reads. 


68 


We had a copy sent to us and it was read over and the engineers 
turned it down. I can say to you further, and I know what I 
am talking about when I tell you, that every conductor on that 
road, but four, turned it down in their meetings. 

We are the people who are vitally affected by this bill because 
we handle the heaviest trains in the State. 

Mr. Willis : In that connection, here is something that has 
been handed to us, purporting to be a resolution at a regular 
meeting of the Order of Railway Conductors, H. H. Rogers 
Division Ho. 261, held at Victoria, Va., February 1st, 1914, 
at which 15 members were present, and they unanimously voted 
“to request you to use your efforts to enact as a law a bill which 
is before the House known as the Fifty-Car-Limit to a train in 
the State of Virginia, for the reason that longer trains are more 
dangerous to the employees and to the traveling public as to 
loss of life and limb and damage to the railroad companies’ 
equipment, and we do not believe it will place any hardship on 
the companies with increasing trains.” That is signed by the 
Secretary, J. II. Bailey. 

Mr. Wells: I will ask the gentleman what the action of that 
same division of the O. R. C. was at a regular meeting before 
that ? That was gotten up at a special meeting called one week 
ago last Sunday. 

Mr. Dodson: Can I reply to the gentleman? 

The Chairman: With his permission. 

Mr. Wells: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: I will answer it by saying to him that that 
business pertains to the interest of the Order of Railway Con¬ 
ductors, which he has absolutely nothing to do with and I don’t 
care to have him discuss it before this committee. He has a 
perfect right to say anything he desires about his own organiza¬ 
tion, but we would rather he would refrain from discussing 
affairs pertaining to the interest of our organization. 

A Committeeman: This purports to be a resolution of the 
Division. 


69 


Mr. Dodson : Yes, sir, it is a genuine resolution. This was 
a regular meeting and it so states. 

Committeeman: Is it or not true that at some other meet¬ 
ing these gentlemen took different action? 

Mr. Dodson: I might as well answer his question as to 
answer yours. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other. 

Committeeman: That is true, but— 

Mr. Dodson: If they took different action they did not 
address it to this General Assembly, and they did address this 
communication to the General Assembly. 

Mr. Wells: Let me state for the benefit of the gentleman, 
I don’t know anything about the O. R. C.’s inner workings, 
thank God. I am an engineer. I do know what the B. of L. E. 
did. 


Are you a member of the B. of L. E. 

Yes, sir. 

Are you a member of the O. It. C. ? 

No, sir. I just said I was not, and I thank 


Mr. Willis: 

Mr. Wells: 

Mr. Willis: 

Mr. Wells: 

God for it. 

Mr. Willis: I wouldn’t make any personal allusions. Your 
statement a moment ago, there were only four conductors en¬ 
dorsed that, is that true or not? 

Mr. Wells: That is true if men who were at meetings held 
by the conductors tell the truth. 

Mr. Willis: You mean to say that resolution is not authen¬ 


tic ? 

Mr. Wells: I can’t tell you that, because it is undoubtedly 
so. Mr. Bailey is a perfect gentleman. I believe, if he didn’t 
have his hands tied, he would tell you his version of the max¬ 
imum train law, as would other conductors on the Virginian 
Railroad. 

Mr. Willis: I want to suggest that we are wasting time 
going into these personal matters. Regardless of who en¬ 
dorsed this, we are here to hear the merits of this bill. 

Mr. Wells: Then let me say to you people— 

A Committeeman: I think it is a matter of importance, 


70 


whether these gentlemen do or do not think that they are 
safe. 

Mr. Wells: If I said anything personal against Mr. 
Dodson or any one else, that is a different thing; I am sorry 
for that. I don’t take it as a personal affair. But if there 
is any truth in the men who work with me, in the great 
brotherhood of man, there is truth in this assertion, that 
every conductor who has ever been talked to on the streets, 
every last one on the Virginian, save four, have flat-footedly 
and openly refused to coincide with this bill; that the other 
employees have not endorsed it, not one. 

Mr. Willis: Then, I understand that their official 
action and their personal action is different? 

Mr. Wells: That may be so in connection with what he 
has. 

The Chairman: Is there anything further? 

Mr. Wells: Nothing, unless some one has some question 
to ask. 

Mr. Morrison: The Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio will 
submit a written statement with respect to these two bills, 
if it is agreeable to you, as it is now getting late. 

The Chairman: Will you furnish us a number of copies? 

Mr. Morrison: Yes, sir. 

REMARKS OF MR. POTTER, PRESIDENT 
CAROLINA, CLINCHFIELD & OHIO RAILWAY. 

Mr. Chairman: 

Our road is a very small road, but I don’t want it to be 
lost in the shuffle. Let me tell you a little bit about the 
history of this road. About eight or nine years ago Mr. 
George L. Carter, an exceptionally progressive upbuilder of 
the State for many years, conceived the notion of building 
a new trunk line from some point in eastern Kentucky to 
Charleston, S. C. He took the scheme to New York, and 
the bankers there called in engineers to figure on it. They 
figured on it for a while and figured that only one road would 


n 


pay. They said a two and a half per cent, grade line and 
sixteen degree curve line in the South would not do, be¬ 
cause to build such a road would involve much expense 
and it would become congested before it could earn 
enough to pay the interest on it. It turned on that pro¬ 
position. But they did report that a road, with low grades, 
and easy curvature, with heavy equipment, especially 
designed to handle not only eighty or ninety but one hun¬ 
dred and twenty-car trains would pay in time. It would not 
pay at the outset. If Mr. Carter succeeded in developing 
the Southwest though, it would pay; so they built that road, 
and it has been doing very well. It has not paid yet but is 
jumping along pretty fast. We are operating that railroad 
now. We start out from the coal fields with about ninety 
cars of coal, and we run sixty miles with them and then we 
double head and add pushers, and we are making a nice 
showing. If we were to cut our trains in two, practically, 
limit them to fifty cars (our operating people who are here 
tell me this, and I guess they are telling the truth) the 
transportation cost, that is, the cost of actually moving the 
business over the line, would be increased ninety per cent. 
They tell me further that that would mean a reduction of 
about ten per cent, in our net earnings. It would mean 
a reduction of about twenty-five per cent, of our surplus, 
that is, the amount left after paying the interest on our 
bonds; in other words, it would reduce twenty-five per 
cent, the amount available for dividends to the stock¬ 
holders, which is equivalent to saying the stockholders 
would have to wait twenty-five per cent, longer before 
they can get dividends. Another way to put it would 
be that the short trains would mean that the public would 
have to wait twenty-five per cent, longer for reduced rates, 
employees twenty-five per cent, longer for higher wages, and, 
we regret to say, the owners of the property, in considering 
making developments would be shy about twenty-five per 
cent, in courage to go ahead and build. We have been work¬ 
ing along this scheme of big train loads and heavy trains. 


72 


The first link Mr. Carter put there was between Dante, 
Va., and Spartanburg, S. C. After constructing that part 
and waiting a little while we decided to take another pull. 
We are now constructing another link between Dante, 
Va., and Elkhorn, Ky., on the same expensive big train 
basis. That is getting along very nicely and we expect to 
be operating that about next August; and we have already 
begun to look towards Charleston. Whether we will ever 
get there will depend very largely upon the acts of this 
legislature. Certain it is that, if the owners of this property 
had had any idea that there was any possibility of any such 
measure as this ever being enacted, the Clinchfield Railway 
would never have been built, and Southwest Virginia lands 
to-day, instead of being $100 or $200 an acre, would have 
been kicking along at about five or six. That would have 
been the situation. Now why the sacrifice should be made, 
I don’t know. I am prepared to assert one thing, and that 
is this; that no railroad man in the world, whether he be 
train dispatcher, superintendent, manager, or executive offi¬ 
cer, who has in his charge the preservation of the security of 
the life and limb of his employees, or the property or the in¬ 
tegrity of the railroad investment, would tell you that you can 
handle a given tonnage over a given line within a given time 
in short trains either with greater economy or safety than 
with longer trains. You may select any ten thousand men 
in America, who are managing railroads to-day and respon¬ 
sible for the men and money, and not one in any ten thousand 
will tell you to go to the shorter trains. Why, gentlemen, it is 
manifestly absurd. I am not a technical man and would 
not go into that feature of it, but it does not require techincal 
discussion. Take this situation: Suppose you have, say 
48,000 tons you want to move over a section in a day. You 
could move that with sixteen 3,000-ton trains, or eight 6,000- 
ton trains, four going each way. If you move that business 
in eight 3,000-ton trains each way, or sixteen trains in all, 
you would have sixty-four meeting points, in handling 
48,000 tons. If you moved that same tonnage in eight 


73 


trains, four trains each way, you would have only sixteen 
meeting points. See what that means. As you increase 
the number of meetings for a given tonnage, you increase 
the complexity of operation, and the danger and expense 
all along the line. Sixty-four meetings, instead of sixteen, 
means four times the danger in transmitting orders and 
giving signals; four times the danger of derailments in going 
into and out of sidings; four times the stops; four times 
the application of brakes; four times the sudden strains, 
jars, and wear; four times the danger of congestion and 
the liability of collision. 

Mr. Robertson: Which do you make less speed on, a 
short train or a long? 

Mr. Potter: You make best speed on short trains. 
From the standpoint of getting volume of tonnage over the 
road in a given time, you make better time with the long 
train. 

It would absolutely ruin the Clinchfield Railroad and 
there is nothing to defend it. They talk about danger. 
We have never had any trouble. Out of 500 movements in 
the last six months we had but twenty breaks in two. We 
have been operating six years handling 100 and 120-car trains, 
and we have never seriously injured one man that could be 
pointed to as the result of a long train. Our men don’t 
complain. 

A Committeeman: As far as you know what is the at¬ 
titude of your men in reference to this? 

Mr. Potter: Mr. Phetteplace is here, and I would be 
glad to get that from him. 

Mr. Phetteplace: There is no complaint from our men 
about long trains. They have been getting along as well as 
the short trains. 

Mr. Buchanan: There are some further witnesses here 
from the Norfolk & Western and some from the Coast Line 
and Southern. Shall we hear them? 

The Chairman: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Buchanan: We will call Mr. Hester of the Norfolk 
A Western. 


74 


STATEMENT OF MR. J. D. HESTER. 

Mr. Buchanan: How long have you been with the 
Norfolk & Western Railroad? 

Mr. Hester: I entered the service of the Norfolk & 
Western in 1885 and have been in continuous service ever 
since. 

Mr. Buchanan: What position do you now occupy 
with the railroad? 

Mr. Hester: I am at present Superintendent of the 
Shenandoah Division. 

Mr. Buchanan: You know the object of this bill under 
discussion? 

Mr. Hester: Yes, sir, I have very carefully studied the 
bill. 

Mr. Buchanan: If you attempted to handle the traffic 
of the Norfolk & Western Railroad with trains limited to 
fifty cars, what would be the result? 

Mr. Hester: It would simply mean disaster. By cutting 
trains in half, or reducing them to fifty cars, would mean 
nothing more or less than a great expense and burden on 
the railroad company. 

Mr. Buchanan: Would that multiply the number of 
your trains operated? 

Mr. Hester: It would simply multiply our trains and, 
therefore, increase the risk and hazard to the employees, 
as well as the public. 

Mr. Buchanan: Then it is your opinion, based on 
your experience of years as a railroad man, that the passage 
of this bill, or its enactment into law, would increase the 
hazard to employees and to the public. 

Mr. Hester : It would decidedly. It certainly would 
increase it. 

Mr. Buchanan: Have you ever been a conductor? 

Mr. Hester: Yes, sir, I had about ten years’ experience 
as a conductor. 

Mr. Buchanan: Then your statement to the com- 


75 


mittee is based on your experience as a railroad man in 
various positions? 

Mr. Hester: It is based on my experience as a railroad 
man in various positions and in the old link and pin days, 
which I do not suppose there are many gentlemen present 
who remember very much about? 


STATEMENT OF MR. S. NICHOLSON. 


Mr. Nicholson, what road are you 

Norfolk & Western. 

How long have you been on the Nor- 


Mr. Buchanan: 
employed by? 

Mr. Nicholson: 

Mr. Buchanan: 
folk & Western? 

Mr. Nicholson: I have been with them about thirty 
years. 

Mr. Buchanan: Have you studied this bill as to its 
effect on railroad operation as to hazard? 

Mr. Nicholson: I have. 

Mr. Buchanan: State to the committee your opinion, 
as based on your experience, as to what would be the effect 
of this bill as to safety in the movement of trains? 

Mr. Nicholson: I think it would be a backward step 
as to safety. I cannot imagine how the present length 
of trains makes any perceptible hazard, but I can see how, 
to reduce this train practically fifty per cent., would in¬ 
crease the number of trains very largely, and consequently 
would increase the number of men employed and running 
on trains, and it would be more men that the hazard or 
danger of accident could happen to. The same thing would 
be true as to others than employees—at highway crossings, 
trespassers upon the tracks. 

Mr. Buchanan: It would decidedly increase the num¬ 
ber of trains to handle your present traffic, wouldn’t it? 

Mr. Nicholson: Indeed it would. 

Mr. Buchanan: What effect does that have, the hazard, 
as to the public and employees if you increase the number 


76 


of trains and also the number of men employed? Would 
that increase the hazard of operation? 

Mr. Nicholson: Certainly it does. 

Mr. Buchanan: What is your present position with 
the Norfolk & Western? 

Mr. Nicholson: Train Master. 

Mr. Buchanan: Based on your experience as a rail¬ 
road man on the Norfolk & Western, if this bill was enacted 
into law what effect would you say it would have upon the 
safety in the movement of trains; would it increase or di¬ 
minish it? 

Mr. Nicholson: I think it would very seriously increase 
the danger and hazard to employees and others. 

STATEMENT OF MR. C. T. HESLEP. 

Mr. Buchanan: What road are you employed by? 

Mr. Heslep: Norfolk & Western. 

Mr. Buchanan: What capacity? 

Mr. Heslep: Engineer. 

Mr. Buchanan: How long have you been employed? 

Mr. Heslep: About twenty-seven years. 

Mr. Buchanan: You have heard the discussion of this 
bill have you? 

Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Buchanan: Now, based on our present traffic, what 
would be the effect of this bill; would it increase the number 
of trains? 

Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Buchanan: What would be the effect of that as 
to hazard to employees and the public? 

Mr. Heslep: As a railroad man of experience I think 
it would increase the hazard to employees as well as the 
public, by increasing the number of employees in the train 
service. 

Mr. Buchanan: Then, it is your opinion, based upon 
your experience as an engineer of twenty-seven years, that 


77 


the passage of this bill would increase the hazard to em¬ 
ployees and to the public? 

Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir, I do. 

A Committeeman: Are you a member of the B. of L. E? 
Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir. 

Committeeman: Is that organization demanding this 
bill? 


Mr. Heslep: No, sir, they are not. 

Committeeman: The conductors are the gentlemen who 
want it. 


Mr. Heslep: I don’t know. I could not speak for 
them. 

Mr. Dodson: May I ask Mr. Heslep a question? You 
say you are a member of the B. of L. E. Did your lodge 
endorse this bill? 

Mr. Heslep: No, they did not endorse the bill to get 
the bill through. 

Mr. Dodson: 

Mr. Heslep: 

Mr. Dodson: 

Mr. Heslep: It is my information that it was not 
endorsed. 


They did not? 

No, sir. 

I have information that they did. 

It is my information that it was 


STATEMENT OF MR. H. E. HUTCHENS. 

Mr. Chairman: 

I will not throw my hat in the ring for but a few min¬ 
utes. I have a very few statistics to give you. For the 
last seventeen years the Southern Railway has been running 
fifty-five to sixty-car trains at the rate of three or four to 
eight per day; and, taking an average of six, it would make 
thirty men per day involved in that service, or approxi¬ 
mately nine to ten thousand per annum; and for the last 
ten years (I have only had opportunity to go back to the 
records during that time) I find those trains involved di¬ 
rectly and indirectly in six deaths and twenty-nine personal 
injuries. Of those six deaths, three were trespassers. One 


78 


was found dead on the track; I don’t know how he was killed, 
but the train crew found him. One of them was killed 
either boarding a moving train or through crossing a moving 
train. One was an employee standing on the track looking 
at another train. Two were employees of the road trying 
to cross a moving train. Of the twenty-nine personal in¬ 
juries, three were trespassers, five were in the derailment of 
an engine and caboose that was returning light after carry¬ 
ing down a 60-car train, three were on the ground, or track, 
and struck by trains or projections from trains, five in 
falling, jumping on or off moving trains. The remainder 
were minor cases of cinder in the eye or a lump of coal falling 
on the foot or something of that kind. That is our ex¬ 
perience in running 55 to 60-car trains. 

Mr. W. B. Mcllwaine: What would be the effect 
financially if the bill was passed? 

Mr. Hutchens: There are gentlemen more deeply in¬ 
terested and who have studied that matter a great deal more 
than I have, who have testified to the financial burden. 
There is no question but what it would be a great financial 
burden to the railroads. The object of the bill, as I under¬ 
stood from the gentlemen favoring it this morning, is the 
promotion of safety. It is utterly impossible for me to see 
that object, coming as a result of the enactment of the bill 
into a law, for the reason that you are increasing the num¬ 
ber of trains and the hazard of accidents and increasing 
the number of employees involved. The gentleman (I did 
not catch his name) awhile ago, illustrated that point very 
clearly. You cannot put 16 trains on the road, meeting 
sixteen trains with the same degree of safety that you can 
eight trains meeting eight trains. You are increasing the 
density of traffic to such an extent that the hazard of personal 
injury is very much greater. 

Mr. Mcllwaine: The Atlantic Coast Line has Mr. 
Newell, its General Superintendent, here, and, as he feels 
interested in this bill, I would like for him to have an op¬ 
portunity to make a statement. 


79 


STATEMENT OF MR. W. H. NEWELL. 

Mr . Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: 

I have just hurriedly gotten up a few figures here, some 
of which I will submit and then will leave the papers with 
the committee. The Atlantic Coast Line only has about 
one hundred and forty miles of railroad in the State of 
Virginia. We enter Norfolk and Richmond as you know. 
Based on October, which is one of our lightest months, we 
handled on our Richmond and Norfolk Districts two hun¬ 
dred and fifty-two (252) trains which were in excess of 50 
cars per train. The mileage of these trains was 29,632. 

Number of freight trains necessary to move cars in 

excess of 50 cars per train. 46 

Number of freight train miles necessary to move 

cars in excess of 50 cars per train.4,524 

(This would be an increased expense of about 
(7,000.00 per month.) 

Of the 252 trains operated only four (4) trains parted. 
Number of these trains tied up on account of the 

sixteen-hour law.None 

Number of freight trains run handling 50 cars 

and less, per train. 580 

Number of these trains parting. 6 

Number of trains of less than 50 cars tied up on 

account of the sixteen-hour law. 2 

During years 1912 and 1913, employees killed or 

injured in trains of over 50 cars. 12 

Employees killed or injured in trains of 50 cars or 
less. 59 

There are two paramount objects in eliminating curves, 
reducing grades, increasing traction power of locomotives, 
increasing the capacity of cars and other equipment and 
adopting all the modern safety devices, at an enormous 
expense; first: to reduce hazard and danger to the employees 
of the company and the public; second, to expedite the hand¬ 
ling of freight and traffic to meet the demands of the pub¬ 
lic. Of course, there are many other reasons. It is ab- 










80 


solutely necessary, as has been stated, to employ every 
reasonable method to handle the property economically. 
This must be done in order to acquire funds for the purpose 
of meeting the heavy expenditures, and second, to pay a 
reasonable dividend to the stockholders. 

I have “Exhibit A” which I am going to read and show 
to the committee some of the expenditures that we have 
made here in the State of Virginia in the past three years, 
and the work is now in process, and is only commencing in 
one sense. 

Mr. Mclllwaine: Is that made necessary in a large 
measure by a determination to handle larger trains? 

Mr. Newell: Yes, sir. In addition to this I want to say 
that some years ago we built a Belt Line around the City of 
Petersburg in order to eliminate the grades so that we might 
haul more cars per train and also to cut out and eliminate the 
great hazard in the City of Petersburg. This “Exhibit A” is 
a statement of approximate cost of construction in the State of 
Virginia for 1912, 1913, and 1914 as follows: 


Second track: Virginia State Line to Collier 

48 miles.$ 

Improvements: James Piver Branch, 

Double track line, 

Change of line 4.5 miles, 

Change of grade 1.5 miles, 

Double tracking existing line 1.5 miles, 

Total cost. 

Freight Yard, Falling Creek, Virginia. 

360-car capacity including interlocking, 

Total cost. 

Additional freight, passenger and track facilities, 
Pinners Point, Virginia, 

Total cost. 

Freight Yard, Collier, Virginia, 

Connection with R. & W. By., 

Total cost. 

Replacement of Bridge, Appomattox River, 
Petersburg Belt Line, 

Total cost. 


665,000 

285,000 

65,500 

185,000 

40,000 

85,000 








81 


Interlocking for double track between Richmond 
and Virginia State Line, 

Total cost. . .$ 73,000 

$1,398,500 

Estimated Cost of Petersburg Belt Line Ex¬ 
cluding Bridge, 

Total cost.$ 80,000 

That is in' addition to automatic signals, that are not con¬ 
structed at the present time, which it is estimated will cost about 
eight hundred dollars per mile. These blocks have to be a mile 
apart and will probably cost between six and eight thousand 
dollars. There is a total expenditure here in the past two and 
a half years of over a million and a half dollars for the purpose 
of increasing our safety to our employees and for the purpose 
of hauling larger trains in order that we might in some measure 
get back some money that we are losing otherwise. 

How, I want for just a moment to show you something about 
the increase of wages that we have paid these men behind the 
engine. In the past four years the increase paid passenger con¬ 
ductors amounted to 31 per cent.; through freight conductors 
33 per cent.; yard conductors 43 per cent.; white switchmen 88 
per cent.; through freight flagmen and brakemen 57 per cent.; 
passenger flagmen 59 per cent.; passenger baggage masters 44 
per cent.; local freight conductors 25 per cent.; local freight 
flagmen 44 per cent.; conductors—work-trains 50 per cent.; 
flagmen—work-trains 125 per cent. 

How, based on the month of January, which is probably our 
lightest month, here are the salaries that we paid to the men 
behind the engines: Passenger conductors, average, month of 
January $177.37 ; freight conductors $161.09; local freight con¬ 
ductors $158.33; night yard conductors $124.30; day yard con¬ 
ductors $117.97; baggage men $103.95; freight brakemen on 
through freights $107.96; local freight flagmen $108.01; day 
yard switchmen $105.60; night yard switchmen $112.50. 

How, I just want to say in a practical way that I am speaking 
entirely from the standpoint of a practical railroad man. I came 





82 


up from the ranks and I have been in the service continuously of 
this railroad that I now represent for thirty-eight years. I have 
been a trainman, was for fourteen years. I listened very atten¬ 
tively to some of the arguments presented this morning in regard 
to the danger of short trains. Yes, there was danger in handling 
short trains in old days, in the link-coupling time and when we 
did not have the very best modem devices; but now we have 
the best that science knows anything about. The railroad com¬ 
panies have spent millions of dollars in its power and its equip¬ 
ment, and in automatic signals and everything that will possibly 
relate to the safety of its employees. 

Mr. Robertson : From your figures there as to the difference 
in safety between a short and a long train. You figured the long 
train down to an insignificant percentage of danger. Arguing 
from that, if you double the size of the long train you wouldn’t 
have any danger at all, would you? 

Mr. Newell: The figures I submit are really on account of 
more light trains than very long trains. I don’t think there is 
any question about that; but it is perfect absurdity, judging from 
my observation or experience, to say or think for a moment that 
it is any more dangerous to have a long train than a short train. 

A Committeeman: I want to know whether there is any 
information before the committee as to this proposition: I 
represent a mining district and, whenever business is at its best, 
we naturally have a congestion of traffic and shortage of cars; 
our miners have to lay off about half the time. Is there any 
information before the committee as to the results in using long 
trains as against short trains from that standpoint ? 

Col. Battle: I think that matter was covered by Mr. Potter. 

Mr. Potter: You double the length of the train, you nearly 
double the number of cars possible to be delivered to the mines 
in any given length of time. 

A Committeeman: As to the length of time it takes to han¬ 
dle the cars and get them back, I want to know about what is the 
proportion of long trains as against short trains. I shouldn’t 
think it would be double. 


83 


STATEMENT OF W. S. BATTLE, Jr. 

I think, Mr. Chairman, that one reason that we hear so much 
of the hazards of railway occupations is because it is more or less 
of a public business. I have never felt myself that it is so much 
more hazardous than other occupations employing a similar 
number of men. I think statistics show that for the year ending 
June 12, 1913, there were in the United States 1,728,603 rail¬ 
way employees and they were paid $1,268,977,272. I simply 
mention that to show you the size of the business and the num¬ 
ber of men employed. It is true that in any instrument of loco¬ 
motion, whether passenger trains or freight trains or automobiles 
or horses or aeroplanes, anything that moves, accidents will be 
caused and people will be hurt. Just as long as we operate rail¬ 
roads we are going to have accidents; it belongs to the business; 
but it has been very clearly shown, I think, by these gentlemen 
who have preceded me and given their statistics that reducing 
the number of trains run reduces the opportunity for accident, 
and the reasons were given you. I want to pay special notice 
to some statements made this morning. I am not going to read 
all of this to you. Consider it as read. During the two years 
ending June 30, 1913 (and that period, June 30, was taken 
because it is the winding up of reports made to the Interstate 
Commerce Commission), trains of more than fifty cars killed 
one man in the State of Virginia. That man was a track la¬ 
borer, run over at 4:20 a. m. August 15, 1912. It is true trains 
part and the effects of their parting is very unpleasant. During 
that two years no man was killed in the State of Virginia, where 
thirty-five per cent, of our trains are more than fifty cars, by 
the train parting. During that same period two men were killed. 
First, a brakeman was thrown from the top of a 41-car train 
by the engine breaking off and the automatic application of the 
air brakes, and he was killed. A conductor in a 25-car train 
was thrown off in front of the train and killed by the automatic 
application of the emergency or air brake when the air hose 
broke. Those were the only two cases, I think, that happened. 


84 


It is a fact that a great many more people along tracks are killed 
by short trains than by long trains, and I presume for the reason 
that long trains are handled more slowly, that they make more 
noise and can be heard farther. Mr. Robertson asked a question 
I think this morning. I did not quite get it. I understood him 
to mean a comparison of mileage to men killed and injured. 
The best comparison we can make is the basis of the train mile¬ 
age. Freight trains of over fifty cars in length killed one man. 
There were 4,173,027 train miles run with the death of one 
employee. Trains of less than fifty cars killed 20 employees. 
One employee was killed to each 518,025 miles run. Trains of 
more than fifty cars injured one employee for each 23,183 train 
miles. Trains of fifty cars and less injured one employee for 
each 19,045 train miles. There was discussed this morning the 
danger and hazards of this business, and I want to call your 
attention to what Commissioner McChord says in regard to acci¬ 
dents. He is one of the Interstate Commerce Commissioners 
and lives in Washington. I believe everybody here has heard 
of him; I know we have. He says: “There are certain acci¬ 
dents which occur with more or less regularity and frequency 
on railroads that may properly be called unavoidable. Such are 
accidents due to exceptional elemental disturbances, entirely un¬ 
expected landslides or washouts, want of ordinary precaution on 
the part of passengers or employees, malicious tampering with 
roadway or equipment, etc. Such accidents are accepted as 
among the ordinary hazards of railroading and may be dismissed 
from our reckoning. We deplore the casualties which accom¬ 
pany such accidents just as we deplore the loss of life that ac¬ 
companies the destruction of a ship in a great storm at sea, but 
in the one case as in the other we know that no human foresight 
could have prevented the accident.” During the period of 1893 
to 1911 he also states that deaths and injuries decreased 73 per 
cent., and that has been since the time of the general use of the 
air brake and automatic couplers. 

Mr. Robertson : Have you any data to show as to the 
strength of cars that carry coal, their strength of structure? 


85 


Col. Battle : No, sir. This morning Mr. Doak made a com¬ 
parison of long trains, I think he said over 50 cars, in a certain 
period, in the United States, something like 375,000 miles, 
which had broken in two and which had caused accidents. That 
is about right, isn’t it ? 

Mr. Doak: I think you are mistaken as to that part of it. 
There were nine cases in this brief; and, for fear that there may 
be some misunderstanding in reference to my position as to the 
brief I read this morning, I stated that I read that for a gentle¬ 
man who is absent. 

Col. Battle: I just wanted to get you correctly. You quoted 
nine cases? 

Mr. Doak : Nine cases that happened on the Norfolk & 
Western that they had kept records of, nine Norfolk & Western 
cases. That was prepared by another gentleman. 

Col. Battle: I did not understand. I though you said in 
the whole world. 

Mr. Doak: No, sir, on the Norfolk & Western. 

Col. Battle: I don’t remember the length of time which 
you said it extended over. 

Mr. Doak : I don’t know whether that was in there. I just 
simply read a brief that was prepared because Mr. Dodson asked 
me. We filed with the committee a copy of that. 

Col. Battle: During that period of these nine cases, for 
two years, we killed nobody with a long train, one man was run 
over; and we killed twenty with short trains; and I have given 
you cases where men were thrown off the train and killed by 
breaking in two or by the hose breaking. 

A Committeeman: What is your proportion of long and 
short trains ? 

Col. Battle: In Virginia 35 per cent.; on the whole line 
something like 45 per cent. 

Mr. Doak also read, I think, a statement of the Safety Com¬ 
mission of the Norfolk & Western, showing 1,154 injuries in 
three months. 


86 


Mr. Doak : I don't know the period. That was the number. 
It was taken from the report. 

Col. Battle: How, that means that all employees on the 
Norfolk & Western, and is not confined to the employees in train 
service in Virginia. There are employed on the Norfolk & West¬ 
ern I think something over 30,000 employees. There are em¬ 
ployed in the State of Virginia, 2,328 trainmen. Other men, 
shop, station and track service, amount to 12,535; so there are 
very much fewer trainmen killed than shop men. A great many 
more accidents happen in shops, where a large number of men 
are employed and where we report anything that causes a loss 
of three days time, than occur on the road—many more acci¬ 
dents. I inaugurated the Norfolk & Western Safety First Move¬ 
ment, which he spoke of; and the object of that is to get the men 
to unite with the company (the trainmen) in an effort to prevent 
accidents. We know that men get into careless habits and make 
little mistakes that gradually lead up to big things. This move¬ 
ment is purely educational and is going to help a great deal and 
it is getting the help of all the men. These conductors (and I 
want to say we have got good ones on the Norfolk & Western) 
are looking at it, however, from a narrow standpoint. They are 
looking at it from their own particular point of view, from the 
train which they are on that breaks in two. The railway man¬ 
agement does not look at that end alone, from his standpoint, 
but from the standpoint of the many other thousands of em¬ 
ployees of the railroad company, also the standpoint of the pub¬ 
lic. They do not always appreciate that. The Norfolk & West¬ 
ern has spent since June 30, 1903, to June 30, 1913, for con¬ 
structions, additions and betterments, and that means double 
tracking through the State of Virginia, building cut offs around 
Petersburg and Lynchburg and other points, as well as in West 
Virginia and Ohio, a total of over fifty-eight million dollars, 
for improved facilities. During that same period it has spent 
over thirty-five million dollars for equipment, and all that equip¬ 
ment is heavy equipment; I mean by that equipment which may 
be handled in trains of more than 50 cars. The object of all 


87 


this expenditure of money was that the trainloads could be in¬ 
creased. If we were to go back to the conditions that existed 
when that money commenced to be spent in 1903, that total of 
ninety-four million dollars has been thrown away. If it had 
been a mistake, if it had caused the loss of life or increased the 
killing of passengers or employees, I don’t think it should be 
considered for one moment. I do not think a question of money 
should enter into the saving of life; and I think I have demon¬ 
strated very clearly that the longer the train the fewer the hazard 
points, the less derailments and fewer accidents. I believe it is 
in the interest of safety. 

Professor Hadley (he is President of Yale) says: “I am 
afraid to believe the public or the government is awake to the 
real state of things. In our endeavor to control corporations we 
tore off a short lesson from Efficiency instead of increasing it. 
We are appalled by a railway accident and we suggest that every 
engine should have two engineers instead of one. A fast train 
runs off the track and a government officer suggests that people 
ought not to want to travel so fast. If these views prevail, the 
day of America’s greatness is done.” 

I think Mr. Dodson read you this morning an extract from 
a Norfolk & Western time table in reference to flagging when a 
train breaks in two. That is absolutely correct; they break in 
two and they block both tracks; and these special instructions 
tell the men what to do in case these things happen so as to pre¬ 
vent accidents. The special instructions is put there for the 
benefit of all the men, and especially new men, and written out 
of the experience and observation of men who have been study¬ 
ing this question for years. The emergency air brake is made 
to stop a train quickly and stops it. I think the effect is just 
the same when the engineer, in order to prevent striking a per¬ 
son or team or stock or anything else, puts on his emergency air 
brake. He controls the braking power. It has the same effect on 
the rear as when it breaks in two; I don’t think there is any 
difference in the effect of that air when he has to do that. He 


88 


might as well wreck the train on the rear end as when it breaks 
in two and the automatic air brake applied. 

Instead of being in the interest of safety, I believe that you 
would have taken a most backward step and that your action 
would result in the killing of more men employed in train 
service, the killing of more people at road crossings and who 
walk along the tracks of railroads than any measure that you 
could pass; and I would urge you very earnestly to consider 
what has been said to you and not recommend the passage of 
this bill. 

There is one other thing I did overlook. I want to 
quote from a statement from Commissioner McChord. 

“In the light of the 'record, it may safely be asserted 
that, considering the accidents to employees which the 
coupler and air brake laws were designed to prevent, the 
greater part of those which now occur are due to the ordi¬ 
nary hazards of the railroading industry. It is also proper 
to observe that the use of these appliances, in addition to 
so greatly reducing accidents to employees, has brought 
abundant returns to the railroads in economies of opera¬ 
tion. Not only is time saved in the make-up and move¬ 
ment of trains by the use of the automatic coupler and 
air brake, but it is also certain that the great economics 
of modern transportation that have resulted from heavier 
equipment and longer trains would have been quite im¬ 
possible of realization without the use of the appliances 
prescribed by the safety appliance acts. 

“Leaving those accidents, the causes of which are plain 
and against the occurrence of which the law seems to have 
provided efficient safeguards, we come to a class of train 
accidents upon which public attention has been centered 
for many years, but which continue to occur with dis¬ 
tressing frequency in spite of all measures thus far taken 
to prevent them. Collisions and derailments were re¬ 
sponsible for 4,163 deaths, 63,002 injuries, and a property 
loss of $50,025,303.00 during the five-year period, 1907 to 


89 


1911, inclusive. The number of collisions and derailments 
during this period, as reported by the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission, was 61,806. No road can claim im¬ 
munity from these accidents, as they occur on the best 
equipped and best managed roads as frequently as on roads 
less well managed or equipped. Moreover, there is a 
dreary monotony in the sameness of the reported causes 
of these accidents. Year after year derailments and col¬ 
lisions due to identical causes are reported.” The causes 
Mr. McChord attributes to “the personal equation in rail¬ 
roading, showing that by far the greater number of these 
harrowing train accidents were due to human error. The 
bulletins show that errors in the operation of the train 
order system are frequent and fatal. Such errors are all 
of a kind. Dispatchers give wrong orders, or fail to give 
orders where they are required; operators fail to copy 
orders correctly, or do not deliver orders that should be 
delivered; conductors and engineers misread, misinterpret, 
overlook or forget orders.” 

The twenty-sixth annual report of the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission for the year ending June 30th, 1912, 
gives the following statistics: Killed in collisions and 
derailments 772; injured 15,096. Killed by defective 
equipment 68; injured 1,197; of these 68 deaths and 1,197 
injuries caused by equipment, only seven deaths and 59 
injuries are shown as due to failure of power (air) brake 
apparatus, hose and couplers, and if the 7 deaths and 59 
injuries can, by any stretch of imagination, be claimed 
to be entirely due to long trains, yet in an effort to elim¬ 
inate the small percentage by this legislation the immediate 
effect is the multiplying of the 772 deaths and 15,096 in¬ 
juries due to collisions and derailments by increasing the 
number of trains to be run into and derailed and the num¬ 
ber of men on those trains exposed to injury. 

The Chairman: I understand you gentlemen are 
through. 

Mr. Buchanan: Yes, sir, we are through. 


90 


(Further hearing was adjourned until February 11th, 
1914, at 10 a. m.) 

February 11th, 1914, 10:00 a. m. 
The committee met at 10:00 o’clock a. m., continuing 
its hearing on the bill under consideration. 

STATEMENT OF MR. HORNE. 

(memo.: A short portion of Mr. Horne’s remarks had 
been delivered before the following stenographic re¬ 
port was begun.) 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen , 

By comparison, taking 5 conductors and comparing 
the total number of damaged cars in those long trains, we 
have during the thirty-day period 77 cars broken up, an 
average of 15 2-5 cars every thirty days for each conductor 
in this territory, in fact, also on the system. We tried 
to be conservative in making our estimates, and we think 
it is a very conservative estimate. In taking the above 
figures as a basis, where the five conductors handled 135 
trains, one-half being loaded, consisting of trains of 60 cars 
on an average, and one-half on an average of 90 cars, now 
in those trains there are trains that have handled 100 emp¬ 
ties and others that handled 70 loads, some less than that. 
In taking this as a basis we have on the system approxi¬ 
mately 200 crews in what we term pool crew service that 
handle the long trains. We have crews that handle the 
time freight and often they do 30 to 60 loads, and in a great 
many cases on their return trip they come in the pool; 
but approximately we have 200 pool crews on the Nor¬ 
folk & Western system. We have taken as a basis the 
cost of these cars, on an average of 3,000 cars a month, 
and that is a low estimate; 3,000 damaged cars a month 
is a very low estimate, because we are handling at 
the present time a good many cars with wooden draft 
timbers, or wooden sills, the end sills are wooden often; 


91 


and the weight of a train of 80 or 85 or 90 or 65 or 70 loads 
will oftentimes cause the end to pull off that car because 
the sills and the draft timbers are insufficient to stand the 
weight or pull on there. Take on a basis of 200 crews. 
We give you 3,000 cars damaged. We estimate the aver¬ 
age cost of those cars at $20. Now as a matter of fact 
that is a low estimate, there is no question about that, 
because, while to-day we might have a car that broke a 
knuckle pin that would probably cost 10 or 15 cents to 
replace, we might go on in the same train a little bit further 
and we might pull out a drawbar that would cost labor 
and the amount necessary for the drawbar fixture, which 
would probably run to $10; or, at the same time, we might 
pull out an entire end of this car, or we might pull the car 
in two in the middle, which is often done. We estimate 
that taking the amount necessary to replace this pin and 
the amount necessary to rebuild that car, it will run up 
into hundreds of dollars, but we are just making an esti¬ 
mate of $20. In making that estimate, where we have 
here a comparison showing where 5 trains damaged 77 
cars, it makes the total amount necessary to repair those 
cars of $60,000. That much is made necessary to repair 
those cars at the estimate we give of $20 a car. We go a 
little bit further; we will take the above figures as a basis, 
135 trains handled, one-half being loads and the other half 
being empties, with an average of 75 cars per train. By the 
proposed bill of 50 cars this would increase the number of 
train crews one-third, or on the above basis, from 135 to 
180. The cost per hundred miles for one conductor and 
two brakemen at the cost prevailing in this territory, in 
the eastern territory (no, the eastern territory does not 
pay as high rates as we do, so I can’t compare the eastern 

territory)-at the rates prevailing in this territory for 

these classes of service, conductor $4.10 per hundred miles 
and brakemen $2.75 per hundred miles, would make a 
total of $9.60 per day for one crew. This, multiplied by 
a one-third increase, or 45 crews, would make a cost of 



92 


$432 a day. Taking the above figures, 77 cars damaged 
at an average of $20 a car, would make a total of $1,540; 
and, by comparison of what it would cost by adding the 
additional crews as above figured out, at $432, we find a 
difference of $1,108, if all these accidents were prevented 
or we find by comparison it would not cost the railroad 
one-third as much as repairs to cars on above basis. 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, this is a serious question 
with us. When I say us, that is the conductors; that is, 
every man that comes in contact with these long trains 
or rides behind them, and I speak for the brakeman the 
same as for the conductor, because we are associated with 
him and we ride with him in the caboose, we are looking 
out for his protection the same as we are looking out for 
ourselves. We want you gentlemen to give us something 
that is going to give us, the men who ride behind these 
trains, some degree of safety. That is all we ask. We 
want some degree of safety so that we can get on our trains 
at the terminal and expect to get back and see our wives 
and children. It is no more than right; it is due these 
men that they should have that protection, just as 
much as it is that you should have protection when you 
get on that passenger train and start from one city to 
another. You expect the railroad company and you ex¬ 
pect the employees to give you all that degree of safety 
that can possibly be had, and we are within our rights 
when we ask you to do the same towards us. Gentlemen, 
I hope you will give this careful consideration, careful 
consideration because it is worthy of that. We have a 
number of cases where our men have gone out, left families 
with a smile on their faces, and come back and sent to a 
hospital or sent to the undertaker. We have had that to 
happen not only once but numbers of times; and in the 
first case in there where the conductor and brakeman were 
knocked out of the caboose and rendered unconscious, 
suppose there had been a passenger train following along, 


93 


or suppose there had been another freight train following 
along, what would have been the result? You know. 

The Chairman: Mr. Dodson, how many more men 
have you now who want to be heard? We are going into 
executive session in about half an hour and we want to 
close"this case up. 

Mr: Dodson: We have 5 or 6 more men, but they will 
not take up more than about 5 minutes. I will ask you 
to hear Mr. Draper, a Norfolk and Western conductor. 


STATEMENT OF MR. DRAPER. 

Mr. Chairman , 

I am a conductor on the Norfolk & Western Railway 
on the west end. Some time ago as a train of 87 cars with 
two engines was going up hill about eight miles an hour 
a knuckle broke on the eighth car from the engine, which 
parted the train and threw the brakes into emergency. 
The impact was so great that it knocked the truck from 
under the rear car and put that car on the ground, and 
knocked the brakemen out of the caboose and broke three 
ribs. He was in the hospital quite a while. Another 
train was following us closely. It put all lights out on 
the caboose. By the time I could get straightened around 
and light a few lights, it was nearly time for that train. 
That is one instance. Another instance I know about; 
we had an automatic block system. The air hose broke 
in a long train on a crooked piece of track and it knocked 
the conductor and brakeman both senseless. A passenger 
train was following closely, and they came to just in time 
to flag the passenger train. We are in constant fear of 
riding the caboose on these long trains. We have to keep 
ourselves braced all the time in order to keep from getting 
injured, and we are worn out when we get home. I don’t 
know from my experience that I ever saw a person injured 
riding behind a small train. I just want to make these 


94 


statements and don’t know as I need take up any more 
time. 

A Committeeman: What is the status of the law govern¬ 
ing these cases in adjoining States? West Virginia, for 
instance? 

Mr. Draper: I don’t know, sir. I never went to 
West Virginia. 

Mr. Willis: Do you know, Mr. Horne, what is the 
law in other States? 

Mr. Horne: We have no law that governs the Mallet 
engine that I know of. 

A Committeeman: Is there any reason why we should 
have this applicable in Virginia more so than in other 
States? 

Mr. Horne: No, sir. We say we need it every place. 
We need it in West Virginia and Ohio the same as here. 

A Committeeman: What States have you got it in? 

Mr. Horne: We have it in Arizona. That is all I 
know. I don’t know whether they have it in Indiana or 
not. 

Mr. Cardwell: Mr. Horne, may I ask you one question? 
Was this bill pending before the Ohio Legislature recently? 

Mr. Horne: I don’t know whether it went to committees 
or not, but there was a bill drafted. 

Mr. Cardwell: It was contested in the Legislature, 
wasn’t it? 

Mr. Horne: I don’t know whether it ever got to the 
committee or ever got up or not. Mr. Draper says it didn’t 
get to the committees. 

Mr. Dodson: I will ask you to hear Mr. Meetze. 
STATEMENT OF MR. MEETZE. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: 

I want to say that, in my judgment, the railroad companies 
have failed to make out a case. Their argument from 
start to finish, from A to Z, before this committee day 


95 


before yesterday and before the Senate Committee on 
yesterday, was to this end; that the longer the train the 
less chance there was for accident, and the shorter the 
train the more liability of accident. Their arguments and 
statistics from start to finish have been to make the im¬ 
pression upon this committee that it was really dangerous 
to get upon an engine-and-one-car train; but if you had 
a train from 1 to 5 miles long you were at safety. I think 
when I start home again I will ride a coal train to Wash¬ 
ington if their testimony and their statistics are true. Now, 
Mr. Miller asked a question a while ago, and I am sure 
he did not understand that when he asked if a 50-car train 
would not stop as quick as a 100-car train when the 
air hose parted. That is true, Mr. Miller, but, in a 50- 
car train, if you have a foot of slack to a car, you have 
50 feet of slack, and with a hundred car train you have a 
hundred feet of slack; in other words the caboose on a 
100-car train runs a hundred feet before it gets against 
the mountain, and a 50-car train runs 50 feet. Now the 
engineer upon the Virginian (Mr. Wells) who testified 
yesterday and the day before, said that he hauled shanty 
cars in a train of 100 cars (I don’t doubt his word); that he 
handled the crankiest foreman of a crew that ever was 
hauled in any state, and, if he upset a cup of coffee, he 
heard from that man. Now, if these long trains can tear 
up a stove out of a floor that is fastened with three rods 
as large as my finger and throw it clear across the car, I 
want to ask you what it will do with a cup of coffee? Now 
they do that. When these concussions come they rip these 
stoves up root and branch and carry them to the other 
end of the car, either strip the threads off or tear the floor 
up. Now, these are facts and I challenge successful con¬ 
tradiction of it. The foreman of those shanty cars never 
could get to that engineer, because he is a mile ahead of 
him all the time. How could he get there to cuss him out? 
He cuts off a mile ahead of that fellow, puts his engine 
away, and is in bed and asleep before that man can 


96 


walk that mile. Mr. Wells certainly ought to be handling 
a Pullman car train of 100 Pullmans. A man that can 
handle a train as he can, I believe he must know how to 
handle it. I want to tell you, when you have 100 cars 
and 100 feet of slack, and something happens to the air, 
there is something going to happen to the people and to 
the public traveling on a passenger, or freight train that 
comes along there and runs into that train. There was 
quite a laugh before the Senate Committee yesterday when 
I said something about a train handling 90,000,000 pounds. 
I meant 9,000,000. I got Mr. Buchanan this morning (he 
laughed at me) to figure on that thing, and instead of 
9,000,000 it is 15,800,000 pounds that one of these trains 
weighs, including the cars and 60 tons of coal to a car. 
Get your pencil and paper and figure it. I want to ask 
you what is going to happen when 15,800,000 pounds is 
going 20 to 30 miles an hour and something happens? I 
want to ask you another thing: Do you believe that if this 
bill is passed and becomes a law any road in the State of 
Virginia to-morrow will haul one pound of coal less than 
they are hauling to-day? They use their pushers on these 
trains they have to-day; they have to have a crew on these 
pushers, therefore, if they cut the train in two they will 
only need an extra caboose. They have got the crews 
already on the road. The argument was used that they 
could not get these cars back to the mines in time. I tell 
you that an engine with 50 cars can get them back quicker 
than an engine with 100 cars. This is not a bill calculated 
to put any railroad into bankruptcy or into the hands of 
receivers; and, if you find it is, it is your duty as represen¬ 
tatives of the State of Virginia to defeat it. We are elected 
by the people to enact certain laws as will be for the bene¬ 
fit of all concerned. The question was asked, had any 
other states adopted this rule. I say that Virginia has 
been a leader of the great Commonwealths, and it is up to 
her to lead in all laws that will set an example to the world, 
therefore, it makes no difference whether any state has 


97 


adopted it or not. If it is a good one, it is up to Virginia 
to be in the lead. God forbid that I should ever raise my 
hand or voice against any railroad company; but it is for 
the interests of employees and for the public, and, it has 
been shown here by figures, it is for the interest of the 
railroad companies. Didn’t they meet here in defence of 
the caboose bill and the electric light bill and every other 
bill, that has been produced here? Yet they have gotten 
together amicably; they have been adjusted and the rail¬ 
road men have their cabooses and have their electric lights. 
They can produce the neatest set of figures over night of 
any set of gentlemen that I have ever seen. They have 
the brightest and best attorneys that the State can pro¬ 
duce. I take my hat off to them, and they are the kind I 
like to come up against, because, when you associate with 
smart men, you possibly will be enlightened yourself. I 
thought last night that by to-day they would prove that 
they have never killed a man since they have been in the 

railroad service-and they came very nearly proving it 

yesterday evening before the Senate Committee. I think 
the general manager of the Virginian said that they had 
killed one man since they have been in service. I think 
he was run over. It was one of the railroads that ran over 
a tramp in the Dismal Swamp. 

Now, I am not going to take any more of your time. 
I believe that this committee will seriously consider this 
bill as drafted; that it will seriously consider the statis¬ 
tics produced here by the railroad people and by the em¬ 
ployees, and it will seriously consider the testimony of the 
men behind these trains from day to day, who know the 
facts, who ride behind these trains and whose lives are in 
danger from minute to minute. It is your duty as mem¬ 
bers of this committee to weigh all this evidence and to 
render a verdict according thereto. 

Mr. Birrell: As patron of this bill— 

The Chairman: Do you want to close? 

Mr. Birrell: Yes, sir. 



98 


The Chairman: Let Mr. Fitzhugh be heard first. 

Mr. Dodson: Whom does the gentleman represent? 

Mr. W. B. Fitzhugh: I represent the farmers of the 
Eastern Shore of Virginia. 

STATEMENT OF MR. W. B. FITZHUGH. 

Mr. Chairman: 

Reaching the city yesterday evening, I heard of this bill. 
I am not here representing any railroad company, cor¬ 
poration or syndicate. Every member of the legislature 
knows my position. I am here simply as to local conditions 
in regard to the 50-car limit. You take for instance the 
Eastern Shore of Virginia, one of our little local towns— 
take my little Town of Machipongo— 

The Chairman: Have you a railroad over there? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Yes, sir, the grandest people, the finest 
women, the most magnificent horses and oysters and sweet 
potatoes. 

The Chairman: How about the men? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Plenty of that, and juleps to put it in. 

The Chairman: I didn’t say anything about mint; I 
said men. 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Mr. Fitzhugh thinks that wherever there 
are men there ought to be mint. 

This is a serious matter to the people of the Eastern 
Shore of Virginia. I am going to try to be brief. For in¬ 
stance, right in my own town we have an average of 100 to 
125 carloads of potatoes a day. Our market to-day is $4.50 
a barrel for potatoes. If you restrict that to carrying out 
50 carloads of potatoes and the market is $4 to-day, to¬ 
morrow morning probably before ten o’clock the market has 
fallen down to $2; the consequence is that 50 carloads of 
potatoes are left on that siding to the injury and detriment 
of the farmer; they are at a heavy loss. I have seen carried 
over our line, which is almost a straight line, as high as 125 
cars of potatoes with perfect safety. We have delivered 


99 


those potatoes and we have had no trouble and complaint. 
On the contrary, if this bill is adopted and we have sold to¬ 
day in the City of New York 75 cars of potatoes, and they 
can only carry out to-night 50 cars at $4 a barrel, my other 
25 cars are left there at a fall of $2 a barrel on those pota¬ 
toes. 

Mr. Dodson: What railroad is that? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: The New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk. 

Mr. Dodson: Is it a fact you have as many as 50 cars 
of potatoes at one time at a station? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: We have as many as 100. 

Mr. Dodson: Isn’t it a fact the railroad could run two 
trains as well as one? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: If they had the engines, but our system 
over there hasn’t got the engines to run out a 50-car train 
at a time. 

Mr. Dodson: Are you connected with the railroad in any 
way? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: No sir. I am a farmer and a sawmill 
man. I am not connected with any railroad company, nor 
do I own any interest in a railroad company and no railroad 
company has asked me to appear here to-day; but I feel a 
deep interest in the success and welfare of the farmers of the 
Eastern Shore of Virginia. For that reason I asked the 
Chairman to allow me a few moments to tell you that it 
would be a great detriment to the Eastern Shore if you put 
upon us a 50-car limit. Right at my little station we have 
on an average of 100 cars in our potato season, every day, 
and you can pick them up from one station to another. 

Mr. Horne: Have you ever had any trouble in getting 
your potatoes out after you delivered them to the railroad 
people? Have they ever come to you and said they could not 
handle them? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Yes, sir, and I lost last year about $400 
in one day’s delivery by not being able to carry them out. 
I say for that reason it is an important matter to the East¬ 
ern Shore of Virginia. I don’t know how you transport 


100 


things on other lines, but on our line it is almost a level 
air line from Cape Charles to Delmar, and we can carry with 
perfect safety 100 to 120 cars on a train. At this season of 
the year we are planting now. You take my little farm; I 
will plant 350 barrels of potatoes on my little farm. It is 
so in a radius of five miles; so you can see what an enormous 
amount of potatoes we have at Machipongo, and at Cheriton 
they pick up others and all that has got to go into 50 cars. 
Two-thirds of our potatoes would be left until the next day, 
which might be a $2 market instead of a $4 market to-day. 
That is my reason. I don’t want my 50 carloads of po¬ 
tatoes and my tenant’s potatoes left there because they 
haven’t got the cars or haven’t got the engines at least to 
carry them out. 

Mr. Brown: Hasn’t your road an equipment of engines 
and all appliances to run it? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: I think they have, about as well as other 
roads. 

Mr. Brown: They have plenty of cars? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Brown: All you will have to do is to put another 
engine on another 50-car train. 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Suppose they didn’t have another engine 
and they came to my station and had picked up at Birds 
Nest or Eastville 45 cars, and I have 15 cars; 10 of my cars 
must be left there to wait for another engine. 

Mr. Brown: Couldn’t you sue the railroad company? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Yes, sir, we can play thunder and light¬ 
ning with some people and then we don’t get anything when 
we sue. 

Mr. Brown: It is a great big rich road. 

Mr. Fitzhugh: I don’t know anything about the wealth. 
I guess they are about as rich as the rest of them. 

Mr. Horne: You are simply looking at this from a 
pecuniary standpoint? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: I don’t know about the pecuniary stand- 


101 


point. I am looking after the interests of the farmers of the 
Eastern Shore of Virginia. 

Mr. Horne: You are perfectly willing to sacrifice the 
life or limb of one man on these 125 cars— 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Not for a million. 

Mr. Horne: To save ten or fifteen dollars? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Not for a million. 

Mr. Buchanan: As a matter of fact it has been shown by 
statistics that long trains in Virginia have not injured— 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Who is it I am answering now? 

Mr. Buchanan: I am telling you what the facts were the 
other day. I want to show that the facts before this com¬ 
mittee have shown the operation of long trains is not more 
hazardous than short. 

Mr. Fitzhugh: We have had no accidents from long 
trains in our community. We have had some trouble with 
fogs or trouble with orders not being carried out; but our 
engines can carry over our line 120 or 125 cars with the same 
safety as 50 cars and no more risk of the engineer and fire¬ 
man than with 10 cars. The question is we want to get out 
our potatoes. We want to ship our potatoes out there on 
the market on which we have sold those potatoes. We want 
the privilege of sending our potatoes out on the market on 
which we have sold them. We sold our potatoes this morn¬ 
ing in New York or to the Produce Exchange for $4 a barrel, 
and we have 100 carloads as an illustration, or 60 carloads, 
and 50 carloads go out, 10 are left. To-morrow the market 
will fall. As you know and every man knows the market 
falls in about six or seven hours, sometimes $2, sometimes 
$1.50, to the detriment of the farmer. Why let 10 extra 
cars of potatoes be left on that siding in order to let them take 
but 50 cars when they could carry 60 as easily without any 
further trouble and annoyance to the crew or anybody else— 
just as safe to carry 60 as to carry 50. 

Mr. Dodson: You said a moment ago that 125 cars 
could be handled with the same degree of safety as a 50-car 
train. 


102 


Mr. Fitzhugh: As far as I can see on our line, yes, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: Have you ever been an employee of these 
railroads as conductor or brakeman? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: I have been no railroad man, or you and 
I both might have been dead. 

Mr. Dodson: You have had no experience at all? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Only by my personal observation as a 
newspaper man twenty-years in my town, I have watched 
transactions on railroads, the shipment of cars, and I think 
for the N. Y. P. & N. we have had fewer accidents and less 
trouble on full trains than on short. Most every accident 
that has occurred has occurred with us on short trains in¬ 
stead of long trains. 

Mr. Dodson: Isn’t it a fact that you are much more in¬ 
terested in the movement of your potatoes and the prices 
than you are in the lives and limbs of these railroad em¬ 
ployees. 

Mr. Fitzhugh: Not at all. I am not that narrow¬ 
minded, I hope. That is all I want to say, and I hope you 
will give this careful consideration. It would mean great 
and serious injury to the people of the Eastern Shore of 
Virginia in transporting their Irish and sweet potatoes. We 
want our potatoes to get out of there. With the equipment 
they have now, at this season of the year they can’t get our 
potatoes out under the new system like under the system 
they have now. It would be impossible to move the po¬ 
tatoes. They can hardly move them to-day with the 
present system, much less the 50-car system. 

Mr. Brown: How many barrels of potatoes does a car 
carry? 

Mr. Fitzhugh: I am supposed to put 190 barrels. I put 
it as high as 220 many a time. Mr. Robertson knows what 
I am saying and knows that it is a fact; and if this bill 
passes it will be a most serious injury to the Eastern Shore 
of Virginia and it will cost the Eastern Shore of Virginia 
thousands and thousands of dollars this year. I don’t 
know how it will be next year when they are prepared for it. 


103 


They are not prepared this season. They couldn’t handle 
them last year. As Mr. Robertson knows, we had how many 
thousands of barrels to spoil on the station? Thousands 
and thousands of barrels. Couldn’t begin to move them, 
and with a 50-car system there we will have I suppose an 
average of 10 or 15 cars of potatoes waiting for transpor¬ 
tation every night. 

STATEMENT OF MR. BIRRELL. 

Mr. Chairman: 

I have not testified because you would have had the 
testimony of a theorist. I want you gentlemen of the 
committee to throw out all the testimony of theorists and 
take the practical men and the only men who are capable 
of giving you evidence as to the effect of the operation of 
these trains, the men who operate these trains, themselves. 
I have as much regard for the interests of the railroads, 
and we are only asking that you treat the railroads fairly. 
We want to treat them fairly. We know you yvill treat 
them fairly and we know you will treat the men fairly. I 
have as much regard for the farmer and his interests. I 
believe that they are the only producing class almost, so 
far as the wealth of this world is concerned, that we have 
to-day; but I want to put before you in the consideration 
of this case in your mind’s eye a big scale, as it were. I 
want you to weigh the effect on these railroad companies 
and on these farmers, and on the other side I want you to 
put the mangled bodies of these men who are wounded or 
killed on these railroads, and weigh if you can the tears of 
the widow and the orphan. I want you to put them on the 
scale, if you can, and let you weigh them. If, as these 
gentlemen contend, the operation of these long trains is a 
source of danger to employees, I don’t want you to let any 
consideration of wealth or the effect on the farmer or on 
the railroads guide you in arriving at the conclusion that 
you shall arrive at. 


104 


I say further than Mr. Meetze, that, if this is a source of 
danger, if lives are being crushed out by the operation of 
these trains, even though the railroads go into the hands 
of receivers, it is your duty, as the protectors of the inter¬ 
ests of men and property, to put the lives of men paramount 
to any property interests that the State of Virginia can 
boast of to-day. I want you gentlemen to consider this 
faithfully, earnestly, and prayerfully. I want to get with 
you some early morning, and I would like to have gotten 
with you this morning, as I was conscious this morning of 
having left undone things that I ought not to have done. 
(Laughter). I notice there are a lot of Episcopalians here. 
I was painfully aware of my many shortcomings, and I felt 
like joining a lot of kindred spirits in prayer. Now take 
this matter under your consideration and deal with the 
railroads justly, and deal with the men justly, and I be¬ 
lieve that whatever verdict you arrive at will be one dic¬ 
tated by your reason and by your conscience. 

Mr. Willis: There is something I do not understand 
exactly about this. I would like to ask one of these rail¬ 
road men this: It has been stated here very frequently, or 
as I understood, the principal danger from these long trains 
is where the train breaks in two up near the engine; that 
that car where it breaks has the brakes applied immediately 
to that. 

Mr. Horne: Yes, sir, to all of them. If all the brakes 
set at the same time it would not be much of a shock back 
there; but if the first brake goes to emergency, it takes a 
certain time for that air to work back there. If you have 
got a car in that train that is cut out, in other words, the 
brakes not working, it will not set the brakes to emergency 
back to the rear; but if all the brakes would set immediately— 

Mr. Willis: I see now. 

Mr. Robertson: You mean that some at the rear would 
not set at all? 

Mr. Horne: They will set to a certain extent. 

Mr. Cousins: As the trainmen have a good many men 


105 


here and the railroad companies have all their witnesses here 
we want to ask if you cannot arrange to give us a hearing 
so as to finish up the debate on the Full Crew Bill. I pre¬ 
sume you have this Car Limit argument out of the way. 

The Chairman: We can’t hear it this morning. 

Mr. Cousins: Can’t you arrange to hear it this after¬ 
noon? 

The Chairman: I will let you know after we get through 
with the executive session. 

Mr. Buchanan: Mr. Kidd will tell you about the 
air brakes. What is your business, Mr. Kidd? 

Mr. Kidd: Specialty man, Instructor of Air Brakes 
and general utility man. What was the question Mr. 
Willis? 

Mr. Willis: The question was answered to my sat¬ 
isfaction a moment ago as regarded why the rear end of a 
train stopped any more abruptly than the front in emer¬ 
gency. The gentleman stated it was because the rear end 
was stopped by the bumpers hitting the cars ahead, and 
the front end was stopped by the brakes. That was what 
I wanted to know. 

Mr. Kidd: The brakes can be set, and do set if there 
is anything like the average working order, on a hundred- 
car train in five seconds. 

(Hearing on the Bill under consideration having been 
completed, the committee went into executive session.) 

CAR LIMIT BILL 

Hearing Before Committee on Roads and Internal Navigation 
of the Senate of Virginia. 

Feb. 10th, 1914-, 4 V • 

The committee met at 4 o’clock p. m. in the Court 
Room of the State Corporation Commission, Senator Har¬ 
mon, Chairman, presiding. 

The Chairman: We are ready to take up Senate Bill 


106 


117, which is a bill to prohibit railway companies from 
operating freight trains in this State, consisting of more 
than fifty cars, and to impose a penalty for failure to com¬ 
ply with the provisions thereof. The Chair would suggest 
to the committee that we find out from each of the parties 
interested how much time they would like to have to be 
heard on this bill, and to try to meet their views as near as 
we possibly can. 

Senator Lesner: Would half an hour on each side be 
enough? 

The Chairman: Mr. Buchanan, do you represent the 
railroads? 

Mr. H. G. Buchanan: I represent the Norfolk & West¬ 
ern Railroad. 

The Chairman: How much time do you need? 

Mr. Buchanan: The Bill is being now heard by the 
House Committee and I think to-morrow is the third session. 
It is a most important bill, and it is estimated that it puts 
an annual increased charge on my railroad of more than 
one and a half million dollars, so you can see the importance 
of it. 

The Chairman: You need about an hour then. 

Mr. Buchanan: Pretty near. 

Mr. Dodson: I think we can get through with our side 
of it in thirty minutes, possibly; not over forty minutes 
at the outside. There are not many to be heard on our 
side on account of postponing the date. We had fifteen 
or sixteen men here that wanted to be heard on this bill, 
but, when it was postponed from the 3d to the 9th, those 
men were costing the organization eight dollars a day and 
we could not keep them here, consequently, we had to send 
them home. 

Senator Watkins: I move we give each side thirty 
minutes. 

Mr. Buchanan: That is a matter of impossibility. 
The president of one railroad company is here and the general 


107 


manager and officials are here to give the committee the 
benefit of their views. 

Senator Lesner: This is a very important matter. 

Mr. Buchanan: I heard the general manager of one 
railroad yesterday state that it would be the financial ruin 
of his railroad. I don’t think he could himself present his 
views in thirty minutes on a matter that is going to ruin 
four or five hundred miles of railroad. 

The Chairman: The Chair will suggest that we hear 
these gentlemen until a quarter after six. If they do not 
finish then we can give them another hearing. 

Senator Lesner: Not a quarter after six, but six o’clock. 
I move we hear them until six o’clock and then determine 
how much further time we will give them. 

Mr. R. B. Bruce: I would like to have fifteen minutes. 
That is all the time I will ask for. 

The Chairman: The committee wants to give you as 
much time as you want. 

Mr. Buchanan: We will not take a minute more than 
absolutely necessary. 

The Chairman: This committee is an extraordinarily 
intelligent committee—my colleague from Richmond says 
no more than other committees. I except those he is on 
out of a matter of courtesy, but I am satisfied the com¬ 
mittee will give them a hearing until they have made up 
their minds. 

STATEMENT OF MR. DODSON. 

Mr. Chairman: 

I want to say in behalf of this bill to begin with that the 
impression has been made here before the General Assembly 
that the people who have introduced this bill here are 
trying to bankrupt the railroads. My friend, Mr. Buchanan, 
just related that to you a few minutes ago. I want to say 
to you gentlemen that it is far from that; we have no such 
idea; in fact, it would be very foolish in us to undertake to 


108 


do such a thing. We are as much interested in the opera¬ 
tion of railroads as these gentlemen who sit around here, 
but the conditions are these: The service that we are re¬ 
quired to provide with the long trains and the accidents 
that are occurring on these trains every day are killing and 
injuring so many of our men, and the position has become 
so hazardous that it has made it necessary for us to come to 
this General Assembly and present the bill as has been drawn 
here. These committees of our organization have taken 
this question up with the managements of these railroads 
(some of them, not all of them) and they have failed to get 
any concessions whatever or any relief along this line. You 
will have the statement made to you that they do not pull 
out many drawheads. We will admit that on some of 
these trains that is a fact; the cars are so constructed that 
it is almost impossible to pull out one unless you pull the 
end of the car off; but the drawheads break off and knuckles 
break and knuckle-pins break, and when these breaks oc¬ 
cur the result on the rear of these long trains is that the 
heavy concussion is just the same as if it had pulled the 
drawhead out or the end of the car out, because the brakes 
immediately go into emergency, and there is where our 
trouble is. 

Now, I have got here a brief prepared that I would like 
to read, which outlines pretty clearly our position in the 
matter, and states, I think, ten specific cases with long 
trains. 

Memo : Mr. Dodson here read to the committee the 
brief prepared by a committee of the Order of Railway 
Conductors, dated Roanoke, Va., January 31, 1914, 
being the same paper read before the House Com¬ 
mittee on Roads and Internal Navigation at the 
hearing upon the Car Limit Bill, February 9, 1914. 

The Chairman: Is the Norfolk & Western the most 
dangerous road in Virginia? 

Mr. Dodson: I hate to say that, but there seems to be 


109 


more trouble on the Norfolk & Western than any other at 
this time. My personal opinion is that it is a good road 
and well operated. 

The Chairman: Do they have all the safety appliances 
on those trains? 

Mr. Dodson: Yes, sir. I don’t know of anything short 
on any of those trains in the way of the Safety Appliance 
Act at all. I think the trains are properly equipped. It is 
not a question of their being improperly equipped; it is only 
a question of their being so long and the weight such that 
the draft rigging and drawbars will not stand the strain 
and they are pulling out and the result is just as you have 
heard here. 

The Chairman: Do the drawheads or drawbars ever 
pull out of a shorter train, say a train of thirty cars? 

Mr. Dodson: Yes, sir. I have seen them pull out of 
ten cars; but you must understand, Mr. Chairman, that 
when these drawheads pull out on thirty cars, or on ten 
cars, they haven’t got that amount of slack which you have 
got in a long train; you don’t get the heavy jam on the rear 
that you get in a long train. There is the trouble. If we 
could handle these trains successfully you would never 
have this bill here. That is all the trouble we have; there 
is so much slack in these long trains that even with the 
air hose bursting the air goes into emergency and the shock 
is just as great as if you pulled out a drawhead; and it has 
almost gotten so, in fact, it has gotten so, on some roads 
that conductors won’t ride on the rear end of these trains; 
you can’t get them on there, notwithstanding the fact that 
the rules of the company require them to ride the rear end 
of trains to properly protect the end. They will not do it. 
There are men running trains in the State of Virginia that 
have not ridden a caboose car in three or four months, I 
expect longer than that. They are afraid of getting killed. 

Senator Lesner: Where do they ride? 

Mr. Dodson: Ride the engine. 


110 


The Chairman: Passengers don’t ride on these long 
freight trains, do they? 

Mr. Dodson: No, sir, I would be very sorry for them 
if they did, if they have the experience we are having with 
them. And when these breaks occur and the flagmen or 
conductor is knocked unconscious, and a passenger train 
is due which they are required to protect and they don’t 
protect it, you realize what the result is and realize some¬ 
thing about who is going to suffer. That is where the pub¬ 
lic gets into it. We think the public should be as much 
interested in it as we are. 

The Chairman: When was it that the last accident 
occurred on the Norfolk & Western when a passenger 
train was caught by the pulling loose of a drawhead? 

Mr. Dodson: I don’t think they have had one caught 
yet. The one that a freight train caught happened on the 
night of the 26th, if I am not mistaken. I was before the 
Committee on the Caboose Car Bill the same day and told 
them this thing would happen sooner or later, and it might 
be a passenger train, and it did happen that night, but it 
happened to be a freight train instead of a passenger train. 

The Chairman: Did it wreck the freight train? 

Mr. Dodson: You just heard me read the report. It 
stripped both engines and left the fireman’s head in one 
place and part of his body and heart in another place, and 
had him in three pieces strung up on these all steel coal cars. 

The Chairman: Was that in Virginia? 

Mr. Dodson: Yes, sir, it happened at Irvin, just west 
of Bedford City, on the Norfolk & Western. 

There is another matter I would like to call your at¬ 
tention to in regard to heavy trains, and that is this; that 
on some of these lines represented here they do not have as 
much trouble as far as breaking in two is concerned as the 
Norfolk & Western does. I am unable to tell you why that 
is. I always thought that the Norfolk & Western felt that 
they had as good equipment as in the State of Virginia, or 
any other state; but for some reason or other they seem to 


Ill 


have more breakings in two than any other road, and more 
employees injured. Here is another hardship it works on us; 
you take these freight divisions, I will say from 125 to 150 
miles long. Ordinarily these trains should go over them in 
nine or ten hours and without the sixteen-hour service law 
interfering with them at all, but they are being caught out on 
the road and being required to tie up for ten hours’ rest, and 
when they do that the railway company is put to additional 
expense; they have to send out for them in many cases 
because shippers are waiting for coal. They have to pay 
the conductor that goes out. The man that is tied up has 
got $4.10 per hundred miles and the man that goes to get 
him gets $4.10. The conductor who is tied up gets mileage 
when he is hauled in, and we have some cases where they 
paid one conductor for 125 miles as much as $12.75, as much 
as three conductors would get for going over the road. I 
hope you will disabuse your mind that we are trying to bank¬ 
rupt the railroads. We regret it as much as anybody else 
that railroads go into the hands of receivers. We simply 
ask for a train we can handle with safety and protect the 
lives of the traveling public. That is all that we ask for 
in this bill; and here is a copy of this brief which I read 
which I will be glad to leave with you gentlemen. 

I would like for you to hear Mr. Meetze. 

STATEMENT OF MR. MEETZE: 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: 

Having had nine years’ experience on railroads, and rep¬ 
resenting a county with two double track railroads and one 
single track railroad, and a great many of my constituents 
being railroad men, I was asked to support these bills which 
were being introduced here for the relief and for the safety 
of the railroad employees and the public. Captain Dodson 
has given you all the figures, and I shall dwell upon a differ¬ 
ent line of thought. In presenting this argument to you, 
gentlemen, I want to say in the outset, that if this com- 


112 


mittee believes that this bill, which is introduced by the rail¬ 
way employees, will bankrupt any railroad in the State of 
Virginia, without any consultation with them I say to you, 
don’t pass this bill; but we do ask you gentlemen of this 
committee to seriously consider the proposition which is 
put up to you in regard to this bill, carefully considering the 
public and the employees, before you decide upon the 
merits of this bill. 

Now, the railroad people here are represented by talent 
unequalled in the State of Virginia or in the United States. 
They are going to present to you figures which will make 
Brother Dodson’s look like thirty cents; but I want you to 
be careful, gentlemen, to analyze these figures. They are 
going to produce testimony here that will show you, or they 
are going to try to show you, that the longer the train the 
less apt to accident, and the shorter the train the more 
hazard. This bill was discussed yesterday nearly all day 
before the House Committee, and that was the main point 
that they made, that the shorter the train the more the ac¬ 
cidents, and the longer the train the less the accidents. 
The} almost made me believe yesterday that it would be 
dangerous to undertake to go from here to Washington on 
an engine and caboose; but if you could get a train that 
would reach from here to half a mile beyond the Jefferson 
Hotel, it would be absolutely safe to ride upon it. I asked 
these railroad gentlemen, “How many of these long trains 
do you ride on the caboose of? ” Now I lived in shanty cars 
nearly nine years. It was the rule of the railroad company 
to haul these cars in the rear of trains. I didn’t ride in any 
100-car train, thank goodness; I rode in them of 10 to 25, 
30 and 40. I have had my length measured on the floor of 
that car more than once. I have had my men knocked out 
of bunks at night, the stove turned upside down and the 
table and dishes and everything put in one pile in the corner. 
Now, why was this? It was because, when these accidents 
occur, the weight and concussion is so great there is nothing 
on God’s earth will prevent it. You take a train of 125 cars 


113 


long, which is one mile and a thousand and some feet, or a 
mile and quarter long, weighing ninety millions tons, the 
train and all; (Laughter) get your pencil and figure it. 
When the air hose bursts, when that train is running twenty- 
five or thirty miles an hour you see what is going to happen. 
A drawhead doesn’t have to pull out, but the bursting of a 
hose or a knuckle breaking. When a knuckle breaks the 
train parts, and when the train parts the air hose bursts, 
and when that is done, it is thrown into emergency, and there 
is part of your train thrown on the next track or in the field; 
and here is a passenger train approaching you. How are 
you going to stop it? Now, there was a bill introduced a 
week or two ago, two of them in regard to caboose cars and 
in regard to headlights. These gentlemen fought those 
bills the same as they are fighting this one. They pleaded 
bankruptcy, they pleaded destruction to their roads. They 
have gotten together with the employees and have adjusted 
those two bills. The employees and the railroads have 
gotten together on them and they are going to have the 
caboose cars they want and they are going to have the 
headlights. Now, they come here and ask you for another 
thing that it is essential they should have. One of the head 
officials yesterday (I think it was Mr. Maher) got $1.25 a 
ton for delivering coal from the mines to Deepwater. With 
a 100-car train at 60 tons to the car, I ask you what the freight 
will amount to on that one train? Seven thousand five 
hundred dollars. Yet they are running behind and unable 
to keep up with the times. On a great many of these trains 
they use pushers. Why? Because one engine can’t handle 
these long trains over the mountains. If they cut this 
train in two they could take that pusher through and make 
two trains and go to the Deepwater, and take these two 
engines and get the cars back to the mines quicker than with 
one. They claim that is a great point, that they must keep 
cars at the mines to keep the employees at work. Now, 
can’t an engine get back with 50 cars quicker than with 100? 
They will also show you how the salaries have been increas- 


114 


ed in the past ten years of their officials or their employees. 
I ask them, have they voluntarily increased their employees’ 
wages, or did they have to go after them to get it. 

Senator Lesner: I don’t see what that has to do with the 
bill, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Meetze: You will see before their testimony is through 
that it has something to do with it. 

The Chairman : They will tell us their side. You tell us 
your side. 

Mr. Meetze: That is what I am trying to do. They also 
will undertake to show you that the accidents in short trains are 
a great many more than the accidents in long trains, but they 
will not show you in proportion to trains. We all know there 
are hundreds of short trains run to those of long trains; but the 
accidents in long trains are greater in proportion to the number 
of trains run than in short trains. Now these gentlemen have 
not come here with this bill to antagonize the railroad compa¬ 
nies—absolutely not—but it is for the protection of the employ¬ 
ees and of the public. Now, you might say, what has the public 
got to do with this business? It has just been stated by Mr. 
Dodson that when these accidents occurred they have plenty of 
examples to show that the other track is blocked when these con¬ 
cussions come; and these passenger trains on the road are moving 
and one is going to dash into these wrecks and dozens of lives 
snuffed out. We simply come to you all with this bill in an hon¬ 
est, upright, honorable way and ask you gentlemen to consider its 
merits; and if you believe that it is going to bankrupt any 
railroad company to comply with the provisions of this bill, I 
warrant you that the employees do not want you to pass it; but 
I do ask you to seriously consider the bill and see if there is 
not merit in it and report this bill favorably and let it come 
before the House and Senate for consideration. I thank you. 

The Chairman: Anybody else, Mr. Dodson ? 

Mr. Dodson: That is all. 

Mr. Buchanan: I want to introduce Col. Battle, of the 
Norfolk & Western. 


115 


STATEMENT OF W. S. BATTLE, Jr: 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

/Mr. Maher, Vice President of the Norfolk & Western, was 
before the House Committee yesterday in reference to this 
measure, but he could not be here to-day on account of having 
to prepare to meet the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
Washington to-morrow in regard to other railway matters. 

I hardly think that Mr. Meetze meant that the railway men 
who produced figures here would deliberately try to mislead this 
committee. The accident statistics and all other statistics are 
filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington, 
or filed in the State of Virginia with your State Corporation 
Commission, and they are wide open to his inspection at any 
time, or the inspection of any other citizen. 

The Norfolk & Western seems to be the road which is under 
chief criticism for its accidents. 

I will present to you as well as I can the statement that Mr. 
Maher made yesterday to the House Committee. 

Mr. Buchanan: How long has Mr. Maher been connected 
with the Norfolk & Western? 

Col. Battle: Thirty odd years. That is the statement made 
by Mr. Maher yesterday before the House Committee and he 
had to leave and I delivered it to you. 

Now I want to take up some of the statements made by Mr. 
Dodson. He said his bill was limited to a train of one engine. 
We have divisions on which one engine handles just as much as 
two handle on another part of the road. I think I am correct 
in stating that on the east end of the Norfolk & Western divisions 
they handle five thousand tons with one engine; on other parts 
it would take two engines ahead and a pusher behind to do that. 

In discussing the accidents which he read to you and which 
had happened over a great period of years, he did not mention 
accidents happening to trains of less than 50 cars. We have 
accidents on both kinds of trains, and a train of less than 50 cars 
can cause just as serious an accident and kill just as many peo- 


116 


pie, or a light engine can if it is run into, as anything else. He 
told you of the emergency brakes, the automatic application of 
the air brake when the train parted. It is true, the parting of 
a train applies the full force of the brakes on all of the wheels 
in that train and stops it. That is what that automatic brake is 
for. The same effect exactly is obtained when the engineer uses 
his brake valve in emergency; he applies the full force of his 
braking power to every wheel in the train just at that time; and 
yet these gentlemen would increase the number of trains and 
increase the number of opportunities for that engineman to 
apply that emergency, which is the same as breaking in two, by 
limiting the size of trains to 50 cars. He spoke of an accident 
which happened on the Norfolk division on January 26th at 
Irvin. He told you that this train had a hundred cars. It did. 
That there was a passing loaded freight train; that the cars in 
this train (the eighty-first and eighty-seventh I think he said) 
buckled, sidewiped that train, killed the fireman and injured 
another man. That accident happened. A knuckle pin broke 
in the tenth car of that 100-car train; and that 100-car train 
weighed in round numbers two thousand tons. We handle with 
that same knuckle pin five thousand tons. It is not a question 
of the length of the train. We don’t know what causes a knuckle 
pin to break. We know they do break. In this particular 
instance the train was going down grade about fifteen miles 
an hour. The breaking of the pin in the tenth car from the 
engine tore the air coupling in two and applied the emergency 
brakes with full force on every wheel in that train back to the 
caboose. That caused the eighty-first and eighty-seventh cars 
to buckle and lean over and swipe this passing freight train. 
The man who was killed was the fireman. The men who are in 
danger in these cases are engineers and firemen, not the con¬ 
ductors and brakemen particularly, but particularly the engine- 
men and firemen. They are not asking you for any 50-car limit. 
They know that the more you increase the number of trains the 
more you increase your meeting points, and your meeting points 
are your danger points whether on single track or double track. 


117 


As I explained yesterday, if you have two trains each way a day 
you have four meeting points; if yon have four you have sixteen; 
if you have ten you have got one hundred. On our division from 
Koanoke to Walton we have a train movement that goes up to 
forty each way a day—not all at the same time, however. 

He also told you the number of employees this safety pamph¬ 
let described as having been injured. I inaugurated that Safety 
Movement on the Norfolk & Western, and it was in realization 
of the fact that more men are hurt from themselves than from 
accidents. We are trying to educate all of them to do their best 
and to prevent their fellow men from being hurt. 

He told you of 1,134 accidents. I don’t know how many 
deaths there were in that, probably four or five. That represents 
not only the men in train service but all the men in shops; and 
a great many more men are employed in shops than in train 
service. It represents men in track service; it represents the 
mashing of a finger or anything else that requires the loss of as 
much as three days’ time; so, when you analyze it, it is really 
not so bad. We have on the Norfolk & Western something like 
30,000 employees. 

During two years (and this report is made to wind up, on 
June 30, 1913) trains of more than 50 cars killed one employee, 
and he was run over down here in the swamp about four o’clock 
in the morning; he wasn’t killed in a train accident. There 
was not a man killed in a train accident of a more than 50-car 
train. That is for two years ending June 30, 1913. These 
figures are made that way so that they would fit with the years’ 
reports made to the Interstate Commerce Commission. During 
that same period twenty employees, as I explained to you, were 
killed by trains of less than 50 cars. One of those men, a brake- 
man, was killed on November 1st, 1911, when the engine to his 
train broke off and applied the brake in emergency as it will do-, 
and threw him off, and his train ran over him and killed him. 
That train consisted of forty-one cars, eighteen loads and twenty- 
three empties. Another one, a conductor, in a train of twenty- 
five cars, was thrown off the top of a flat when the air hose burst 


118 


and applied the brakes and killed him. There were two within 
this period, one in a train of forty-one cars, and one in a train 
of twenty-five; and not one has been killed in any such accident 
during that time or since that I know of. 

Commissioner McChord, who is a member of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission in Washington, has made a study of 
and investigated these railway accidents. He says: “There are 
certain accidents which occur with more or less regularity and 
frequency on railroads that may properly be called unavoidable. 
Such are accidents due to exceptional elemental disturbances, 
entirely unexpected landslides or washouts, want of ordinary 
precaution on the part of passengers or employees, malicious 
tampering with roadway or equipment, etc. Such accidents are 
accepted as among the ordinary hazards of railroading and may 
be dismissed from our reckoning. We deplore the casualties 
which accompany such accidents, just as we deplore the loss of 
life that accompanies the destruction of a ship in a great storm 
at sea, but in the one case as in the other we know that no human 
foresight could have prevented the accident.” He further says 
that “As a result of the adoption of these improved safety appli¬ 
ances, the total number of deaths and injuries in 1911 was 73 
per cent, below that of 1893. This great reduction in hazard of 
operation has resulted although movement of traffic has enor¬ 
mously increased, as appears from the following table.” I will 
not quote that. 

As long as we have railroads we are going to have accidents. 
A great many more men are killed in collisions than any other 
class of accidents. The safety devices and precautions which 
have been provided have reduced that very largely. We have 
collisions. We have collisions in the ocean. A very distressing 
one the other day—two steamships on a track three thousand 
miles wide and they collided. We have got four feet eight and 
a half inches on the railroad and can’t get off. Sometimes they 
collide. 

He further states: “In the light of the record, it may safely 
be asserted that, considering the accidents to employees which 


119 


the coupler and air brake laws were designed to prevent, the 
greater part of those which now occur are due to the ordinary 
hazards of the railroading industry. It is also proper to observe 
that the use of these appliances, in addition to so greatly reduc¬ 
ing the accidents to employees, has brought abundant returns to 
the railroads in economics of operation. Hot only is time saved 
in the make-up and movement of trains by the use of the auto¬ 
matic coupler and air brake, but it is also certain that the great 
economics of modem transportation that have resulted from 
heavier equipment and longer trains would have been quite im¬ 
possible of realization without the use of the appliances pre¬ 
scribed by the safety appliance acts. 

“Leaving those accidents, the causes of which are plain and 
against the occurrence of which the law seems to have provided 
efficient safeguards, we come to a class of train accidents upon 
which public attention has been centered for many years, but 
which continue to occur with distressing frequency in spite of 
all measures thus far taken to prevent them. Collisions and de¬ 
railments were responsible for 4,163 deaths, 67,002 injuries, 
and a property loss of $50,025,303 during the five year period 
1907 to 1911, inclusive. The number of collisions and derail¬ 
ments during this period as reported by the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission, w r as 61,806. Ho road can claim immunity 
from these accidents, as they occur on the best equipped and best 
managed roads quite as frequently as on roads less well managed 
or equipped. Moreover, there is a dreary monotony in the same¬ 
ness of the reported causes of these accidents. Year after year 
derailments and collisions due to identical causes are reported.” 
The causes Mr. McChord attributes to “the personal equation 
in railroading, showing that by far the greater number of these 
harrowing train accidents were due to human error. The bulle¬ 
tins show that errors in the operation of the train order system 
are frequent and fatal. Such errors are all of a kind. Dis¬ 
patchers give wrong orders, or fail to give orders where they are 
required; operators fail to copy orders correctly, or do not de- 


120 


liver orders that should be delivered; conductors and enginemen 
misread, misinterpret, overlook or forget orders.” 

And, yet, notwithstanding the conclusion reached as the re¬ 
sult of this investigation and report, the General Assembly of 
Virginia is asked to enormously increase the number of trains 
to be operated. 

Since 1903 the Norfolk & Western has spent in construction, 
additions and betterments $58,000,000. Since 1904 it has spent 
in heavier equipment, that is, engines to pull these trains of more 
than 50 cars, and cars to handle more coal (and I will say right 
here that we are now building and trying to perfect a car to 
handle a hundred tons of coal), $35,000,000 and over, making 
a total of $94,000,000. That money was expended with the 
purpose of increasing the train loads so that they could make 
some money out of the freight they carry. It was spent with 
the expectation of decreasing accidents and decreasing hazards; 
and it has done so. If the results had shown that very nearly a 
hundred million dollars had been thrown away and the result 
had been a greater sacrifice of life, whether to passengers, the 
public or employees, I don’t think this company would ask you 
to pay any attention to it; they would have made a business 
mistake. The results have not shown that. I thought the Nor¬ 
folk & Western had a pretty good record; I have been working 
for it a long time, and I was right proud of it until these gentle¬ 
men told you how disastrous it was. I do not recall when there 
has been a passenger killed by a train accident in the State of 
Virginia. I do not think, in the time of this few years’ record 
and which I have given you, any passenger was killed in any 
kind of accident. Only one employee was killed by a train of 
over 50 cars, he was a trackman found dead in the swamp at 
4 o’clock in the morning. Twenty were killed by trains of less 
than 50 cars. It is a hazardous business and death and injury 
go with it. Money is paid because the business is more hazard¬ 
ous. If it was as safe as farming the money wouldn’t be there. 
But it is not as hazardous as you would be led to believe. With 
the number of men employed in the service and the hazardous 


121 


occupation, there are not so many killed and injured. Every 
kind of transportation, whether automobile, or horse, or wagon, 
or steam locomotive or aeroplane, has accidents and always will. 

I have tried to show you in this as frankly as I could the 
Norfolk & Western’s situation. As I stated, the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Reports are open; they can be verified by Mr. Meetze or 
any of these gentlemen who would like to do it. There is nothing 
to conceal about them, not only in reference to accidents but 
all other railroad matters. It is practically the government run¬ 
ning us now, certainly supervising us. I can’t say to you too 
earnestly that if you want to increase your accidents and if you 
want to increase your deaths and if you want to bankrupt the 
railroads, pass this bill and you will do it. 

Mr. Buchanan: I will ask that the committee hear Mr. 
Johnson, General Manager of the C. & O. Ry. 

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE P. JOHNSON: 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

I am general manager of the Chesapeake & Ohio. Our 
Vice President was expected to be here but he had to go 
away. 

In making the statement representing the C. & 0. Ry. 
there are a few things I think the committee should know 
the importance of, in addition to the figures I will give. 
The C. & O. is known as a coal carrying railroad, and is in 
the same list as other lines in Virginia as regards that fact. 

In the year 1900 the C. & 0. Ry. carried 4,116,970 tons 
of coal, of which 2,550,165 tons were shipped east, 1,795,541 
tons to tidewater, 754,624 tons inland. We handled in 
the same year 5,630,000 tons of freight other than coal and 
coke. 

In the year 1913 the C. & O. Ry. carried 16,047,704 
tons of coal, of which 6,086,408 tons were shipped east, 
3,531,202 tons to tidewater, 2,555,206 tons inland. We 
handled in the same year 9,126,000 tons of freight other 
than coal and coke. 


122 


In order to do this it was necessary to change the con¬ 
struction of the line as was originally constructed over the 
mountains, or to buy another railroad which would give 
us a low grade freight line where it was possible to handle 
such trains. This was done by the purchase of the Rich¬ 
mond & Alleghany Railroad, between Clifton Forge, Va., 
and Richmond, Va., at a cost of $13,000,000 where it is 
possible, by reason of the low grade line, to haul large freight 
trains at a minimum cost, and were we compelled to com¬ 
ply with the provisions of this bill the investment would 
practically be wasted, for the reason that our rates have 
to be in proportion to the rates of other coal carrying rail¬ 
roads both north and south of us, and if our train haul was 
limited it would increase our expenses to such an extent as 
would eliminate us from the coal business. To show you 
the importance of our coal carrying traffic, and the amount 
of money that has been spent in the last ten years, in order 
to handle it economically and efficiently, the C. & O. Ry. 
has purchased modern cars and engines costing $17,000,000 
and are to-day receiving 4,000 additional cars costing ap¬ 
proximately $4,000,000, and fourteen locomotives costing 
$420,000. 

If this bill is passed in any form limiting the possibility 
of economical transportation, it would eliminate the C. & O. 
from its coal business, not only through the State of Vir¬ 
ginia, but through the other States it operates, for the 
reason that it must necessarily have a market all of the 
year round in order to keep its coal field in operation; and 
in the summer time when the coal business is at its best in 
the west, on account of the lake season where a large por¬ 
tion of our coal is put during that time, the coal companies 
who have invested their money on the C. & O. could not 
keep an organization and be ready to supply the market as 
it developes in both directions. 

If this bill is passed it will cost the C. & O. Ry., in Vir¬ 
ginia alone, one-half million dollars per year additional 
cost in operation, and if the provisions of the bill were ex- 


123 


tended over the entire line limiting the number of cars to 
any one freight train the additional cost of operation of the 
C. & O. Ry. would be two million dbllars per year, or 8 
per cent, of its gross income. 

Mr. Dodson spoke of the Corninjg accident. Did you 
mean the Corning, N. Y., accident? 

Mr. Dodson: I so specified. 

Mr. Johnson: I don’t know whether the committee 
are familiar with that accident or not. The Corning acci¬ 
dent happened July 4th, 1912, and was a rear end collision 
on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railway between 
two passenger trains. There were no freight trains in¬ 
volved in that accident. There was a freight train that 
caused one of the passenger trains to stop. The accident 
was caused by improper flagging and the engineer going by 
an automatic signal. I just bring that out to show the 
committee what the Corning accident was. Here is the 
official report of that accident made by the Public Service 
Commission of New York. 

“Accident investigation.” 

Report on Collision at Corning, N. Y., hy the Second District 
Public Service Commission of New York. 

Rear end collision between trains No. 9 and No. 11, 
on the Buffalo Division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & 
Western Railroad, July 4, 1912, near Corning, N. Y. 

Summary of Facts. 

1. Trains involved in collision: No. 9 (The Buffalo 
Limited) and No. 11 (solid express), both westbound. 

2. Train No. 9 was composed of 10-wheel type loco¬ 
motive No. 1052, and 8-wheel type locomotive No. 973, one 
buffet car, eight sleeping cars, and two coaches. Traifa 
No. 11 was composed of 10-wheel type locomotive No. 1026, 
seven express cars, and one combination express and crew 


car. 


124 


3. Train No. 11 collided with the rear end of train 
No. 9 which was not moving, demolishing woocfen coach 
No. 86, and then tearing into the end of steel coach No. 
160, shoving the same about forty feet into the wooden 
sleeping car Esthonia, demolishing same. 

4. Location: About 1J4 miles east of Corning Freight 
Station on the Buffalo Division of the Delaware, Lacka¬ 
wanna & Western Railroad. 

5. Date and time: July 4, 1912, at 5:20 a. m. 

6. Casualties: Forty persons were killed at the time 
of the accident or received injuries which resulted in death 
within a few hours; seventy-five persons were injured, 
ten of whom received injuries of a serious nature. 

The commission presents herewith the report of Super¬ 
visor of Equipment, A. Buchanan, Jr., of his investigation 
of the rear end collision which occurred on the Buffalo 
Division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Rail¬ 
road near Coming, July 4, 1912. The principal data re¬ 
garding this accident are summarized above. 

CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING THE ACCIDENT. 

These, as set forth more at large in Mr. Buchanan’s 
report, are as follows: 

On the morning of July 4th, freight train No. 61 left 
Elmira at 3:52 a. m., and at 4:40 a. m. pulled in on siding 
at Corning Freight Station to clear train No. 9, which was 
due at 4:45 a. m. 

Extra freight train No. 393, consisting of engine No. 
393 and 55 loaded coal cars and caboose (3,00 tons), left 
Elmira at 4:03 A. M. and arrived at east end of siding at 
Corning Freight Station distance 15.86 miles) at 4:46 
a. m. On arrival at the east end of Corning Freight Sta¬ 
tion siding it was found that train No. 61 was not in on 
siding a sufficient distance to permit extra No. 393 also to 
occupy it and clear the main line. It was necessary for a 
train man to go forward and instruct train No. 61 to pull 


125 


further west on siding. Train No. 393 had, in the mean¬ 
time, pulled in on siding about twenty-five car lengths, and 
was compelled to stop until train No. 61 proceeded west on 
siding. In again starting train No. 393, one of the sills 
on Delaware, Lackawanna & Western steel hopper car No. 
72992 (located the twentieth car from engine) broke, caus¬ 
ing the train to separate. Before this train came to a stop, 
Flagman Michael O’Conner had dropped off to flag train 
No. 9 between home signal 278.1 and distant signal 277.3 
about 3,500 feet east of the rear end of train No. 393 when 
it came to a stop at the east end of siding. 

Train No. 9 (two locomotives and eleven cars) left El¬ 
mira at 4:37 a. m., fifteen minutes late. Arriving at the 
vicinity of Corning Freight Station they found signal 277.3 
set at “Caution,” and proceeded with caution. About 
2,500 feet further west they found flagman of extra train 
No. 393 and torpedoes. The flagman of extra train No. 
393 informed engineer W. Still that train was pulling in on 
Corning Freight Station siding. Train No. 9 proceeded 
about 2,000 feet further west and found signal No. 278.1 set 
at “Stop,” and stopped one minute in accordance with 
signal rules, and then proceeded with train under control, 
stopping again with rear end of train about 250 feet west 
of signal No. 278.1 which was set at “Stop” arriving at this 
position about 5:20 a. m. Flagman Edward J. Lane then 
started to protect his train, and proceeded east about 
2,550 feet, or about half way between signal 278.1 located 
about 250 feet east of train No. 9 and set at “Stop” and 
signal No. 277.3 located about 4,474 feet east of train No. 
9 and set at “Caution.” 

In the meantime, engine No. 1052, the first engine of 
train No. 9 had been cut off to push the rear of disabled end 
extra freight train No. 393 into Corning Freight Station 
siding. 

Train No. 11, consisting of one engine and eight express 
cars, left Elmira at 5, a. m., fifteen minutes late, and while 
running at a speed of from sixty to sixty-five miles an hour, 


126 


Engineer William H. Schroeder ran past “Caution” signal 
No. 277.3, the signals of Flagman Edward J. Lane and 
“Stop” signal No. 278.1 and collided with the rear end of 
train No. 9, cutting through the entire length of the wooden 
coach No. 86, completely demolishing it, and tearing into 
the end of steel coach No. 160 about eight feet, shoving 
same about forty feet into wooden pullman sleeping car 
Esthonia, demolishing same. Steel coach No. 160 had 
in the meantime turned over on its right side, the front end 
of engine No. 1026 being close to the east end of steel coach 
No. 160. Wooden coach No. 86 was distributed on both 
sides of engine No. 1026 below the running boards. Train 
No. 9 was not moving at the time of the collision. 

THE COMMISSIONS’ FINDING. 

The investigation shows clearly that the primary cause 
was the entire failure of Engineer William H. Schroeder 
of train No. 11 to observe signals. The signalling system 
in use on the Lackawanna is an automatic system actuated 
by means of electric track circuits, and compares favorably 
with the standard signalling systems used by the principal 
railways of the country. The evidence shows that the 
head train, No. 9, was protected by a full stop signal about 
250 feet east of the rear of the train, by a flagman about 
2,550 feet east, and by a caution signal nearly 4,500 feet east 
of train No. 9. Engineer Schroeder of train No. 11 disre¬ 
garded all three, and appears to have run at full speed into 
the rear of the train ahead without making any effort to 
stop. 

Mr. Dodson quite properly brings to the attention of 
the Committee the danger features there are in railroading 
and lays particular stress to the dangers of long trains. We 
operated in Virginia last year, 4,900,000 freight train miles, 
and our records show that of the persons killed WYi per cent, 
were killed by the so-called heavy trains and 88 per cent, 
by the light trains, and of the portion injured on our line 


127 


during the same period, 10 per cent, were injured by the 
heavy trains and 90 per cent, by the light trains. Our 
figures show that 48 per cent, of the trains operated, making 
the mileage so stated, were of more than 50 cars, and the 
balance of the trains were less than 50 cars. It would, 
therefore, appear that if our trains were reduced to a maxi¬ 
mum of 50 cars that the element of danger would be multi¬ 
plied; for the reason that we would have to run on some 
parts of our road one-fourth more trains than we did to 
have handled the business. As to the employees being 
injured or killed on the line on account of trains of 50 cars or 
more, there were no employees killed and only 14 injured. 
Trains of 50 cars or less killed 9 employees and injured 102. 
You can readily see from the fact that the percentage of 
trains run on our line is so even as between the heavy and 
light trains, that were the dangers as spoken of by Mr. 
Dodson so pronounced in the heavy trains that there is 
no reason why the same percentage of injuries and deaths 
should not have been carried out in the same proportion 
as to the number of trains. 

The accidents as I have mentioned included struck by 
trains, falling from trains or in train accidents. There 
were no employees killed by trains of 50 cars or more. Of 
the nine killed by smaller trains, two were struck by trains; 
two by falling from cars; one while getting on; one while 
getting off; one while coupling, and one being struck by an 
obstruction. None of these accidents were in any way 
connected with whether a train had 100 cars or whether it 
had 20 cars. As to the other employees killed or injured by 
trains, there were four killed and fourteen injured by the 
50-car trains and there were twenty-two killed and sixty- 
one injured by the less than 50-car trains. Of the four 
killed by train of more than 50 cars, none were killed in 
train accidents or in any way connected with the big train 
feature; all of them were killed by falling from trains or 
getting on or off cars. Of the twenty-two killed by the 
smaller trains, six of them were trespassers getting on or 


128 


off cars and sixteen by being struck by trains. These 
figures clearly demonstrate to my mind that the more 
trains we run the more danger there is, and I think this 
can be clearly shown by the fact that there are a great many 
more people killed or injured on the railroads that have the 
extensive train service in the north, such as the Pennsyl¬ 
vania and New York Central, than in the south where the 
trains are not so thick and there is not the element of 
danger. 

The danger of trains parting—This is one of the elements 
of railroading that none of us have as yet been able to en¬ 
tirely overcome. We are using on the C. & 0. Fy. a larger 
percentage of steel freight cars than any other of the large 
trunk lines, and stand within two or three of the top of the 
list of the steel composit construction cars, which, as far 
as the handling of the train is concerned, is a steel con¬ 
structed car. To bear out this feature of our statement, 
we operated in the State of Virginia in the year 1913, 
20,713 trains handling more than 50 cars, and we have had 
trouble due to trains parting with only 807 of these trains; 
or, in other words, less than 4 per cent, of the trains that we 
operated handling more than 50 cars, we had trouble of any 
kind as to parting. The trouble with trains parting of less 
than 50 cars was 2.5 per cent. There is such a little differ¬ 
ence between the larger trains and the smaller trains, in 
this particular feature of train operation, that I do not be¬ 
lieve it is one that can be consistently considered. For 
your information, the Interstate Commerce Commission 
report compiled from 1902 to 1912 shows that of the total 
number of accidents in railroad service, only eleven ac¬ 
cidents of a serious nature have been caused by trains 
parting. 

Mr. Dodson also brings out the feature of danger of 
big trains parting or air hose bursting and train buckling 
over on to the other track of a double track railroad. Mr. 
Dodson does not, show, however, the number of accidents 
on double track lines that have been caused where trains on 


* 


129 


opposite track ran into obstruction caused by accidents of 
the train where other than train parting or burst air hose 
was responsible. To my knowledge the C. & O. has never 
had what is termed a double track wreck; that is a train 
running into a derailed train on the opposite track. 

Considering all the facts that I have tried to present 
to you, it seems to me that any bill that is passed by the 
Virginia Legislature which curtails the earning power of 
this railroad, which operates 880 miles in Virginia, will be 
one of the most detrimental steps to the future develop¬ 
ment of the State. 

Before closing our statement, I want to call the atten¬ 
tion of this committee to the importance of the C. & O. Ry. 
as a revenue producer to the citizens of Virginia. Our 
statements show that within the last ten years we have paid 
to the employees of the C. & 0. Ry. in Virginia $41,000,000. 
Our pay rolls for the year 1913 were $5,200,000. Therefore, 
it can readily be seen what the result will be if such legis¬ 
lation as is proposed is enacted, towards the citizens of 
Virginia. 

STATEMENT OF MR. BERLINGETT. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 

I represent the Virginian Railway, a short road, and 
possibly a short talk will do for it. You can rest easy that 
I will not detain you very long. 

The Virginian, I expect the committee has not heard 
very much about. It runs from the coal fields of West 
Virginia through the State of Virginia to tidewater at 
Norfolk. Its greatest mileage is in the State of Virginia, 
so that Virginia derives most of the result of the road having 
been constructed. The road was built for the purpose of 
developing territory that was lying dormant not only in 
West Virginia, but in Virginia as well. It has opened up 
a large territory in this State that heretofore was inaccessi¬ 
ble to any railroad. The Virginian road was built with 


130 


a knowledge that its principal business would be a very 
low revenue carrying traffic. It necessarily followed that 
the road had to be so constructed as to admit of handling 
long freight trains if it existed at all or came into existence. 
The road was so constructed. It forced its way through 
Virginia on a low grade at a very heavy cost. The percentage 
of the coal handled by the Virginian road is eighty-five 
per cent, of its total freight business. The Virginian Rail¬ 
way gets less money for handling a ton of coal one mile 
than any railroad in the world without any exception at 
all. I wish to give you a few figures to show you the value 
of the Virginian road to this State, and the same, in a 
large measure, applies to other coal carriers, too. It does 
apply to them entirely so far as this state is concerned. 
The English railways receive over twenty-three mills for 
hauling a ton of coal one mile. The German and French 
railways receive fourteen mills for hauling a ton of coal 
one mile. The average on American roads, outside of coal 
carriers, is seven and four-tenths mills, about one half the 
European roads and very much less than the English roads. 
The Virginian Railway receives three mills and four-tenths 
of a mill for handling a ton of freight one mile. Its rate 
for handling a ton a mile is but three mills. Just think 
of that and what it means in advantage to this State! 
All this coal is hauled clear across the State, and this State, 
with its harbors, gets the full benefit of the activities of 
these coal carrying roads. The Virginian is an asset to 
this State that would equal any possible thing you could 
have. As I stated yesterday to the House Committee, it 
is an asset equal to a second Panama Canal clear across 
your State. Now, if this bill were made a law, it would 
mean running on the Virginian road 4,678 additional freight 
trains in a year, or 539, 744 additional train miles. These 
are figures that are susceptible of proof; we are not guess¬ 
ing at it at all, because we know jfist what we need to handle 
our present traffic if we had to reduce our trains. The 
added cost to the Virginian would be $982,549 in one year. 


131 


That is for train expenses alone. There would be a great 
deal of other expenses which would run it up to over a 
million dollars. Now, gentlemen, you can picture what 
that would mean to a small road. It would mean absolute 
ruin, financially. The road would not be able to pay the 
interest on its mortgage bonds, although at the same time 
it is mortgaged for less than half the actual money put in 
the construction of the road. These bonds are in the 
hands of the public too. It only represents one-half the 
money. The balance of the money never has paid any 
interest; we are not earning it now. The road, without 
any question, would have to go into a receivership. We 
are not earning a surplus that could meet that loss at the 
present time, although the past year has been our most 
prosperous year. That is not all that would happen either. 
In addition to the money spent for low grade, the Virginian 
has in use the most modern high power locomotives; it 
has in use and is equipped with the strongest and best 
design of steel car equipment that is known. We have no 
trouble with it. We are able to handle our trains success¬ 
fully and comfortably. We would have to go out, gentle¬ 
men, and purchase at once, if this bill became a law, double 
the number of locomotives that we now have, because it 
means cutting our trains in two. That would cost several 
million dollars. How could we with an impaired credit 
do that? It would be absolutely impossible. We would 
show that we were doing business at a loss. We could 
not raise any money. There would be but one thing that 
could be done and that would be a curtailment of traffic 
at its source, in other words, a reduction of output at the 
mines. That is the only way that it could be taken care of. 
We could not handle the traffic. We could not run any 
more trains of fifty cars than we are now running with one 
hundred. Either that or the coal would be diverted around 
Virginia, and we do not think that this committee is going 
to lend its aid in building a Chinese Wall around this State 
so far as this coal traffic is concerned. 


132 


Now, I have not said anything about accidents and 
personal injuries due to long trains. We heard a great 
deal about that. There could not be any more erroneous 
claim made. Doesn’t it stand to reason, if you gentle¬ 
men think it over yourselves, that the more trains that 
are run, the more men are involved and the more accidents 
will happen, and the more men will be injured and killed? 
More people get killed and injured on the Pennsylvania 
Railroad, although they have all the safety appliances 
imaginable, than there is, mile for mile, on any rail¬ 
road in this State. Now, the reason is plain—they 
run more trains. Isn’t it fair to say, or isn’t it a fair con¬ 
clusion to reach, that, if we have to double the number of 
our trains, and run the light or short trains, there would 
be more people hurt than there are by running a few long 
trains? It is a reasonable proposition. 

Now, the conductors’ representative gave you a lot of 
statistics. These statistics, if I caught them right, cover 
a period of twenty-four years. When you go back a few 
years, nearly everything was short trains, so that it referred 
nearly entirely to short train service. The cases mentioned, 
too, were particularly isolated cases where the details were 
mentioned. Now, we have facts and figures to show just 
what does happen, and I will give you a few more figures. 
Since the Virginian Railway commenced operation, five 
years ago, we have not killed a single man that could be 
attributed in any way to the operation of a long train. 
There has been no death at all, even among employees, that 
had anything to do with the operation of a long freight 
train. In personal injuries, during the period of two years, 
ending June 30th, 1913, on trains of fifty cars or over there 
was one person injured to every 498 trains run, or one 
to every 57,270 train miles; while, on trains of less than 
fifty cars one person was injured to every 221 trains, or one 
to every 24,341 train miles. This shows that the number 
injured on short trains was greater by more than 100 per 
cent, in two years. Now, of the persons injured during 


133 


the two years (we have so few cases I can just mention the 
cases and show you the causes), only two conductors— 
I have not got all of them, but I just want to show you how 
many of the men who are back of this bill were injured. 
None of them were killed. There were only two in two 
years. One of those men was injured by letting a knuckle 
pin fall on his toe, and the other was knocked over in the 
caboose on account of having been struck by a switch engine 
in the yard. A long train had nothing to do with it. 

Mr. Dodson mentioned that, on account of so many 
men being hurt, it resulted in bringing into use a lot of 
green men. I think the passing of this bill would bring 
in a myriad of green men, increasing the number so. That 
is what it would mean, because we would have to reach 
out and pick farmers off the farm to put on our trains, 
making non-producers out of producers. Do you think 
that is working in the right way? That is the only thing 
we could do. The railways to-day, doing normal business, 
can’t get enough men to man the trains as they stand now; 
they are always short, that is, the country over, when 
business is fair. We have trouble in finding enough men 
when our business is at a proper stage. Say, we would 
have perhaps to double these men—we would have to 
import them from Germany or the English railways. That 
is, good men. We have lots of good men now. We could 
not get enough experienced men if this bill is made a law. 
That is one of the most serious aspects of the case. 

Now, we hear a good deal about the hardships. I 
will just give you a few figures about that and I will quit. 
In our long freight train districts, which are 125 and 126 
mi les long, the average time put in with these long trains 
on the road is nine hours and forty eight minutes, and we 
operate the longest freight divisions of any road in Virginia 
as well as the longest trains; that is from one terminal to 
the other, the length of time that a man is on duty. 

We also heard a good deal about getting tied up on 
the road on account of this 16-hour Federal law. During 


134 


the past year on the Virginian road in Virginia (nearly all 
our mileage is in Virginia) there occurred only twelve cases, 
or instances, of a train crew on trains of over fifty cars 
tying up on the road out of 5,976 trains run. That would 
mean that a man would have to run about 500 days before 
he would get caught in that fix. It is not very serious on 
our road; it is not noticed. The causes of these trains 
tying up (it was not on account of long trains) were six 
on account of line blocked by derailment, two bridges 
washed out, one bridge torn up, one by an engine not steam¬ 
ing and two on account of train breaking in two. The 
average delay to all our trains (and we run 100 per cent, 
long trains in Virginia, everything being long trains with 
us, except of course our local trains) of over fifty cars, on 
account of breaking in two, is eight minutes per train. 
Well, it is not a serious proposition on the Virginian road. 

The Virginian road was known from its inception as 
the road that would have to handle long trains. At the 
time the men in the engine and train service commenced 
work, on entering the service, they were aware of that 
fact. They made no complaint then and are not making 
any complaint now. There must be something back of 
this bill besides the bill as a measure of safety or incon¬ 
venience or discomfort. We actually have a case on re¬ 
cord in our superintendent’s office where a conductor (one 
of the conductors belonging to this organization who are 
backing this bill) claimed by his seniority that he was being 
discriminated against, wasn’t treated right, because the 
superintendent had him running on one of our small trains, 
an 80-car train, and he wanted to run a 100-car train. 
His engine was too small for a 100-car train and he de¬ 
manded one of the other engines. That is a matter of 
record. He thought it was more comfortable, a 100-car 
train, and said so. I think the most charitable thing you 
can say is, I believe the conductors are honest, but they 
are under a misapprehension of the situation. Mr. Dodson 
said that he did not want to ruin the railroads; at the 


135 


same time he is making an awfully good imitation of try¬ 
ing it, and I know it has us soared; and I tell you, gentle¬ 
men, there is not any question at all as to what will happen; 
and this State can’t afford to take a backward step. There 
is nothing that could keep the Virginian out of a receiver¬ 
ship. We could not make any improvements or progress 
or development. The conductors, it seems to me, are not 
seeking this matter in a broad way. I am just speaking 
from my own deductions, personally. They have evi¬ 
dently gone out with a blanket order to get a 50-car train 
bill all over the United States. Virginia is peculiarly 
situated as to train divisions on account of low ton mile 
rate on coal. That is caused by the long haul. It might 
be possible that in some states there would not be injury 
to the state because it might not be felt by the railways; 
but that is not the case in Virginia. It would be an injury 
to the employees, themselves; it wouldn’t have the effect 
they think it would; it would not result in employing more 
men, because we could not afford to run the additional 
trains. I think this bill should never leave a House or 
Senate Committee with one single vote favorable to it. 

Mr. Buchanan: If this question had been agitated in 
your country before Mr. Rogers built the road, would he 
have built it? 

Mr. Berlingett: No, sir. 

STATEMENT OF MR. W. H. WELLS. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: 

I am an engineer on the Virginian Railway, hauling the 
through trains, or the coal trains, that our General Manager 
has told you about, I am not prepared to give you any long 
list of facts by figures; I shall only give you facts as they 
actually exist in every-day work on the railroad, as a loco¬ 
motive engineer. Having no warning that I was expected 
to appear here, I am without any data other than what I have 
heard stated by the gentlemen who have spoken ahead of 


136 


me. I shall only endeavor to answer some of the things 
that were stated to you by the gentlemen of the opposition. 

The Honorable Mr. Meetze, of the House of Delegates, 
told you of the wonderful trains that we pulled in this 
country. I say to you, gentlemen, that I have the dis¬ 
tinction of having pulled more cars per day’s work than any 
other man in the United States in the last four years. That 
is a very broad assertion. My trains daily consist of 100 
cars each way, 100 loads to the seaboard and 100 empties 
back. I handled the largest train that there is any record 
of in the State of Virginia, which consisted of 120 loaded 
cars. They tell you of the enormous length of trains in this 
country. The gentleman spoke of a train of 100 cars being 
a mile and a quarter long. The longest cars that we have 
any record of in this country are circus cars of the circuses 
that travel through the country. We do not handle those 
cars on our line; but if you will take your pencil and figure, 
you will find that these 100 cars don’t make a mile and a 
quarter. The Virginian Railway handles the longest coal 
cars in the State. Those cars are forty-four feet long, 
standing at rest, without the drawbars stretched. It 
takes by actual measurement just 120 of these cars to make 
5,280 feet, which is one mile. One of these trains loaded to 
excess, ten per cent, over load limit, or to the load limit of 
ten per cent, over the regular capacity, gives you 55 tons to 
the car. One of these trains of 120 cars, pulled through the 
State of Virginia by myself, weighed 9,120 tons between the 
engine and caboose. It was handled over a distance of 126 
miles in eight hours and eleven minutes. The train, it¬ 
self, met with no accident and nobody got a jar on the ca¬ 
boose that I know of. The gentleman says he lived eight 
years in shanty cars, and I feel sorry for him if he did. That 
is a hard life to live. I have been on construction myself 
and know what it means. He tells you this was a good 
many years ago, when they pulled short trains, but he had 
his beans spilled by the jar of the caboose, and had his fat 
meat upset. So have I. We handle shanty cars on the 


137 


Virginian behind our 100-car trains. We came out of 
Sewell's Point the other night with seven shanty cars behind 
93 cars. They were old, worn-out wooden box cars, and the 
crankiest old man in the State of Virginia was the boss of 
those cars—Mr. Cahill. Some of the C. & 0. and Norfolk 
& Western people may know him. If you upset a cup of 
coffee for that old man, he is going to tell you the first time 
he gets over to the engine. We handled another man over 
there, an old man, a bridge foreman, Mr. Bates, behind our 
100-car train. I heard no complaint from him. I can go over 
the road any day, and, if I am hungry, I can stop at these 
shanty cars and they will give me something to eat. 

The gentleman spoke to you about the danger of the 
air hose bursting. As a matter of course, the air hose will 
burst. They are made of rubber and they are put under 
a pressure normally of seventy pounds to the square inch, 
which is very high for rubber hose. We do not always 
have perfect, absolutely perfect, equipment on a railroad; 
that is an impossibility. If we never had any air hose to 
burst, the men who make it would probably have to go out of 
business, as they would not have any air hose to make. 
We will take, for instance, the short train that the gentle¬ 
man spoke about handling. It is a known fact that the 
air that goes through this hose comes from the locomotive. 
If you have leaks, you decrease that pressure and make 
it hard to keep up the full pressure as a matter of course. 
On a short train, you would always have the pressure, 
therefore, the greater liability to burst the air hose, caus¬ 
ing this trouble, which is absolutely a fact because the 
source of your air is from the locomotive, and you have to 
have that to handle both long and short trains. 

He spoke about pulling out drawbars. I handle 100 
cars every day. The Virginian has been in operation al¬ 
most five years, I believe the second of next month makes 
five years in operation. In that length of time there has 
never been a drawbar pulled out of one of their cars in one 
of their heavy long trains, and I do not know of but one or 


138 


two instances where a drawbar was broken off. We break 
knuckles; that is an absolute fact. I think I have broken 
four or five in the last year. My conductor told me the 
other day his record showed I had broken five in a year. 
We often break knuckle pins. If we did not break them, 
somebody would have to go out of business. They are 
bound to break. They are nothing but an inch and an 
eighth iron pin that holds the knuckle in. 

They tell you of terrible things happening upon the 
trains. Mr. Berlingett does not look scarred up much, 
and I have seen him have his private car on the rear of a 
100-car train; I have seen the “Dixie” on the rear of a 
100-car train repeatedly. 

The gentleman asked how many rode. It is no novelty 
to find our officials on our trains; they ride the rear of 
these trains any time. 

The gentleman tells you how much safer it would be 
to handle a short train. I am speaking of 50-car trains. 
That is just half the train I handle at the present time. 
At the present time I am handling trains of 100 cars, which 
give me the friction, or braking power, of 800 wheels. As 
the gentlemen who spoke to you have told you, already 
the railroads of this State have asked for bids from car 
manufacturers for cars to carry 100 tons—200,000 ca¬ 
pacity cars. 

Let me say that the only reason for advocating this bill 
is to save the man shoe leather; he doesn’t have to walk 
so far when he comes up to cuss the engineer out for putting 
the air on too hard. Many a time, dozens of times, my 
conductor bids me good-by when he gives me an order 
at the other terminal, and he says, “I will see you when 
we leave on the next trip.” Somebody jumps up and says, 
“How can that be?” For the simple reason that we rail¬ 
road under standard rules, use the 19 order system, and 
we don’t need him; he is not up there and he never shows 
up on the head end. I make trip after trip and never see 
the conductor and never see the brakeman from the time 


139 


I leave one terminal until the time I leave the terminal 
coming back the next day. 

Now, he tells you that it will be so much safer. I will 
tell you what the actual figures are in braking on a freight 
train. The braking power of these cars is figured from 85 
per cent, of the light weight of that car. Let me say that I 
am not coached at all on this thing. I know that I am 
trampling on the railroad management’s toes when I make 
this assertion, nevertheless it is true, and I am a citizen of 
Virginia here to give you the truth as I understand it. The 
braking power on these cars is figured from 85 per cent, of 
the fight weight, which, if loaded, a 50-ton car, we have got 
22 per cent, of that weight affected by the braking power. 
In 70-ton cars, tests made in the State of Virginia recently 
(the cars are standing in this city at the present time), in 
70-ton cars, or 140,000 pounds capacity, the braking figures 
from 85 per cent, of the fight weight of the car; they lost an 
enormous amount—from 22 per cent, down to 16^2 per cent, 
of the braking power. All you do, when you cut these 
trains in two, you will ask the engineer to go thundering 
down through this country with 50 cars behind him and the 
weight of 100 cars, and half the wheels to do the braking 
he has on a 100-car train. I know that the ratio does not 
decrease as fast as some people think it does, but, when you 
take the difference between 22 per cent, and 16 per cent, 
you will see you have lost about 53^ per cent, of the braking 
power, which is a wonderful thing in the hands of an engi¬ 
neer. 

They ask you about the uniformity of the brakes on 
these trains. I will make this assertion and can prove it by 
actual figures, that you can set a stake where our men (I am 
not the only man on the Virginian Railway that handles 100 
cars), handling 90 or 100 cars, tell you that they are going 
to begin braking, and where they do do braking, and nine 
times out of ten he will stop his engine within half an engine 
length of any given point, or where he expects to. That 
shows you under what control they have the 100-car train. 


140 


The engineers run and are responsible for the stopping of the 
train unless the conductor happens to think of something 
and gets mad and reaches up and pulls the air and stops it in 
the caboose. As we say, he pulls the calf’s tail and pulls a 
drawbar out of the head end, and then there is trouble. 

I want to say to you in reference to the endorsement of 
this bill (being with the Virginian Railway where we handle 
these long trains) that every engineer on the First and Sec¬ 
ond Divisions, where these 100-car trains are handled, voted 
unanimously against this bill. I want to tell you (and it may 
be news to some other people in this room who are affected) 
that every engineer on the C. & 0. Railway less than ten 
days ago voted in opposition to this bill, and that every 
engineer on the R. F. & P. Railroad voted in opposition 
to this bill. I can’t tell you what they do any place only 
where I know what I am talking about. I know this to be 
a fact: If there is any truth in the brotherhood of man, 
every conductor on the Virginian Railway, except four, 
voiced their sentiment against this bill, and did it openly. 
There was quite a little bit of laughter when my General 
Manager told you that a conductor on our road wanted to 
pull a 100-car train. That is an absolute fact. I can make 
it stronger than that. This same conductor is the oldest 
freight conductor on our road. He turns down all the local 
freights for this 100-car train. He is the next man for a 
passenger train. He has put in his petition, or has sent a 
letter to the superintendent—I don’t know that my General 
Manager knows this, but I know it because I heard him 
say so, that he does not want to be called in the extra pas¬ 
senger service; he prefers to run this 100-car train until 
such time as he may be able to handle these passenger 
trains regularly. Another man, a staunch member of 
this organization that got up this bill, has made the assertion 
boldly, that, while he is a regular passenger conductor, if it 
were not for just one thing (that he has the turn to obtain 
promotion) he would rather have a 100-car train than a 
passenger train. It is more comfortable; he wasn’t jostled 


141 


around. That shows you what the railroad men on the 
Virginian Railway think of this 50-car law. 

Somebody asked (I believe it was the Chairman of this 
committee) if they ever pulled out drawbars or pulled out 
drawheads or broke drawheads on short trains. They got 
quite a laugh on me on the Virginian. I handle 100-car 
trains every day, as a rule. About one month ago, about 
Christmas time, when business was slack on our road, they 
called me for the work train (I was at Sewell's Point) and 
started me out with one car, and I did jerk a drawbar out of 
that car before I got eight miles. That is a fact. It is 
the truth; nevertheless I can’t help it; and I surely got 
hurrahed for it. I handle 100 cars every day, and I han¬ 
dled one car and jerked the drawhead out. It was a wooden 
car though. 

I don’t know that I have anything further to say. 

Mr. Walter Taylor: I think Mr. Dodson stated the 
conductors were not willing to ride in the caboose on the 
long trains. Is that true? 

Mr. Wells: They bid me good-by when I leave the 
terminal, and I never see them until the next trip. 

Mr. Taylor: Then, where are they? 

Mr. Wells: Back in the caboose. I will say this, that 
we have on our line a code of signals, which are adopted by 
our company, and, in case we need the conductor for any¬ 
thing, we have a whistle to call him over. If we have an 
order to sign, we give one long blast of the whistle an done short 
one, which is the train order signal on our line, required of 
all enginemen to blow when we get to a meeting point. We 
blow the signal station and then blow one long blast and 
one short one, which is the signal to the conductor that we 
have orders affecting us at that station. If we stop and 
the order board is out, we blow one long blast of the whistle 
and a short one to call the conductor. 

Mr. R. B. Bruce: We deem it unnecessary to take up 
more time of the committee. Mr. Potter, the President 
of the C. C. & 0., is here, but we will not insist that he make 


142 


any talk. The matter has been well covered and the time 
seems to be short. 

The Chairman: Does anybody else want to be heard? 

Mr. Buchanan: We have got some engineers from the 
Norfolk & Western. 

STATEMENT OF MR. C. T. HESLEP. 

Mr. Buchanan: Where do you work? 

Mr. Heslep: Norfolk & Western. 

Mr. Buchanan: How long have you been an engineer? 

Mr. Heslep: About twenty-two years. 

Mr. Buchanan: You heard the discussion before the 
House Committee and this afternoon on this bill? 

Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Buchanan: What is your opinion, based on expe¬ 
rience, as to the effect of the passage of this bill, on the opera¬ 
tion of trains, both as to the public and employees? 

Mr. Heslep: By increasing the number of trains, you 
increase the hazard to both the employees and the public. 

Mr. Buchanan: You multiply your trains? 

Mr. Heslep: Yes, sir, and multiply your hazard in in¬ 
juring employees. 

Mr. Buchanan: What kind of accidents would you 
increase? 

Mr. Heslep: Head-end collisions and tail-end colli¬ 
sions, and people getting on and off the trains and people on 
road crossings. 

Mr. Buchanan: Who gets caught on the collision? 

Mr. Heslep: The engineer and fireman generally get it 
first. If the conductor or flagman are asleep, they get it 
before we do. 

Mr. Buchanan: In your opinion, it would not be in the 
interest of safety to pass this bill? 

Mr. Heslep: No, sir. 


143 


STATEMENT OF MR. MAXEY. 

Mr. Buchanan: Are you an engineer on the Norfolk & 
Western? 

Mr. Maxey: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Buchanan: How long have you been an engineer? 

Mr. Maxey: About nine years. 

Mr. Buchanan: Will you state to the committee what 
is your opinion, based on your experience, whether it will 
promote safety by passing this bill? 

Mr. Maxey: I think it will increase accidents by running 
more trains. 

Mr. Buchanan: From what source would accidents 
arise? 

Mr. Maxey: Head-end collisions and rear-end collisions 
and the air hose bursting and the application of the auto¬ 
matic brakes, etc. 

Mr. Buchanan: Your idea is that this would increase 
the hazard in the operation of trains? 

Mr. Maxey: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Dodson: I just want to call the attention of the 
committee that I have submitted a brief, which outlines our 
position thoroughly in this matter, for the consideration 
of this committee, which brief was drawn by a committee 
of ten men who handle these trains; and I want to call the 
attention of the committee especially to the addresses of 
the last two gentlemen who have been put on the stand, 
who are engineers on the Norfolk & Western. I have the 
documents in my possession, and can produce them if you so 
desire, showing that the lodges of the Brotherhood they 
belong to endorsed this Car Limit Bill that we presented here. 

Mr. Heslep: I have been informed by our men on the 
Legislative Board, that they came down flat on it. 

Mr. Maxey: I have also been informed. I am only 
speaking for myself. 

(The committee went into executive session.) 


144 


This bill was passed by indefinitely by both the Senate 
and House Committees, and not only did not reach the 
floor of either body but was not reported out of the respec¬ 
tive committees. 




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